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HINDUTVA

-V. D. SAVARKAR

VEER SAVARKAR
PRAKASHAN

9*

HINDUTVA

WHO IS A HINDU?

A HINDU means a person who regards this land of
BHARATVARSHA, from the Indus to the
Seas as his Father- Land as well

as his Holy-Land that is
the cradle land of his religion. "

-*y-
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar

Who delivers this our Nation of Sapta Sindhus who
endows us with wealth, do thou O ! Lord, hurl
thy mighty thunder- bolt to destroy
our enemies — the Dasas. "

Price Rs. Two

^^^^
VEER SAVARKAR PRAKASHAN

Savarkar Sadan, Bombay 28.

Publisher

S. S. Savarkar

Veer Savarkar Prakashan
Savarkar Sadan, Bombay 28 *

Fifth Edition

Author's birthday
28 May 1969

Copies : 5000 Price Rs. 2 / -

First Edition J 923

Second ; ' 1942

Third " 1950

Fourth " 1965

Fifth " 1969

Printer :

M/s Bhave (P.) Ltd.

Byculla, Bombay 8.

Preface by the Publisher
of second Editon

The romantic history of almost all books by Veer
Savarkar apart from the originality and excellence of
their subject and style, does in itself entitle them to
get prominently featured in the world classics.

The history of this book on " Hindutva " also
does not form an exception to this general statement.

(1 ) It was during his stay from 1906 to 1910 in
England that the attention of Veer Savarkarji was
drawn pointedly to the question as to who can by pre-
cisely called a ' Hindu '. There was a perfect chaos
raging in India at that time as regards this problem
which owing to the controversy in connection with
communal representation assumed an acutely Political
aspect. The Arya-Samajists, the Sikhs, the Brahmos^
the Jains, and several other important constituents
which composed and formed along with the Sanatanists
the great Hindu community were some times counted as
Hindus and at other times as non-Hindus as a whim or
fad, a policy or petty interests dictated. From the most
eminent scholars both Indian and English right down to
the penny aliner in the daily sheets, each and all who
got interested in the subject tried to define the word
' Hindu \ How the more precisely they tried to define
the word ' Hindu ' the more confounded the confusion
grew, could best be seen by the fact that a respectable

(ii)

and studied booklet published at that time on the sub-
ject " Who is a Hindu " could collect some fifty defini-
tions of the word which then held the field and how
the author of it at last summed up the argument by
pointing out that, the word ' Hindu * was simply unde-
finable !

After studying this subject from all its view points
Veer Savarkarji came to the conclusion that the real
cause of failure in arriving at a comprehensive as well
as a correct definition of the word ' Hindu ' lay in the
popular error of identifying the word almost entirely,
with its religious aspect alone. By ' A Hindu ' they
only understood one who owned Hinduism i. e. Hindu
religion. Further on, even this solitary religious aspect
was understood and emphasised rather exclusively in
its dogmatic or doctrinal forms. But it was very
naturally or almost inevitably found that no unity
or uniformity could be traced which was comprehen-
sive enough to encompass the beliefs, the dogmas, the
doctrines, symbolical or scriptural owned by the crores
and crores of people who constituted the great Hindu
community. Above all they never grasped the full im-
port of the national aspect implied in the word
* Hindu \ The inevitable consequence was that some
scholars and politicians gave up altogether the attempt
to define the word ' Hindu ' and those who persisted
in it framed inspite of their scholarly and erudite treat-
ment, definitions which proved either too exclusive or
too overlapping.

To avoid all this confusion Veer Savarkar decided
to approach the question chiefly from its historical

(ili)

aspect and traced the development of the Hindu Race,
religion and polity ever since the Vaidic period.

While he was thus fixing and co-ordinating the
essential constituents of the conception expressed by
the word * Hindu ', Veer Savarkar was arrested in Eng-
land as a political Revolutionist and subsequently sen-
tenced with two transportations for life, amounting to
50 years of imprisonment.

(II) Some years after his transportation to the
Andamans and his stay in cellular confinement his
thoughts reverted again to the question of the definition.
He decided to write a brochure on the subject.

But where was the paper to come from? or the
pen ? The possession of a slip of paper even an inch
long was sure to get the culprit in hand-cuffs for a
week. But Veer Savarkar had long before that, found a
way out of the difficulty and secured a store of paper
as well as pens which lay at his own disposal.

It was the white-washed walls of his own solitary
cell that served him as a paper. With a small pointed
pebble or a thorn he had already developed a masterly
skill in scratching and scribbling on the walls undete-
cted by the watchman poems running into hundreds of
lines which lay there till he got them committed to
memory as convenience would permit. Thus he had
already finished the famous poem *' Kamala " and some
contos of "Gomantak". When the yearly white-washing
of the prison wall was over he could get a fresh supply
of papers for the next year. It was on the white-washed
walls of his solitary cell in the Andamanees prison

(iv)

that the first outlines of this book were sketched, chap-
ters and points fixed and the definition versified.

A gifted poet as Savarkarji was he framed the
definition into the following fine couplet ....

It is as melodious and pleasing to the ear as it is
convincing in its inexorable logic to the intellect. Its
wording is redolent with an appeal to the dearest and
holiest traditions of the Hindu race. It has caught up
the incomprehensible diversity and dimensions of a
people some thirty crores in count in the two magical
words ' facPT ' and ' J^ ' — the identity of the
Fatherland with the Holyland.

This couplet has now come to exercise the authority
of a quotation from holy scriptures. Large sections of
the Hindu public have actually been inquiring every
now and then the name of the Smriti and Puran from
which this couplet is quoted. The Hindu Mahasabha
and the Hindudom in general from Kashmir to Rame-
shwar have enthusiastically acknowledged it as the best
possible definition of the Hindu- Nation — ' f?f ^ c £« '

Apart from the religious aspect involved in the
conception of the words 'Hindu* and 'Hinduism'
Veer Savarkar had to coin some new words such as
'Hindutva', 'Hinduness', 'Hindudom' in order to express
totality of the cultural, historical, and above all the
national aspects along with the religious one, which
mark out the Hindu People as a whole. The definition
is not consequently meant to be. a definition of Hindu-

(v)

Dharma, or Hindu religion. It is a definition of ' f^l^'
'Hindunees. ' It is essentially national in its outlook
and comprehends the Hindu People as a Hindu-Rashtra.

(Ill) After having fixed and committed to me-
mory the outlined sketch of his intended work and
the versified definition Veer Savarkarji discussed it all
every now and then with some of his learned com-
patriots and co-prisoners in the Andaman jail, in the
latter half of his imprisonment when they could some-
times meet together.

But then the question arose how to get the definition
and the main points of the arguments published in
India ? Even the boldest optimist could not have
dared to believe under those circumstances that Veer
Savarkar could ever be released in his life-time and
would be able to read in India in print whatever he
had scratched and scribbled on the white-washed walls
of his cells.

The only way therefore to convey a part at least
of the literature he wrote or composed in the Andamans
was to get some of his compatriots who were due to be
released from time to time, to commit to memory some
of his poems and the outlines of his literary works.
Thus it was by oral recitals that the definition and the
leading arguments were re-transported to India by some
of the political prisoners as they got released and
reached the Indian shores during 1917 to 1919. Then
they arranged to send copies of the gist of this treatise
along with the definition to a number of prominent
Hu»/ M Sanghastanist gentlemen throughout India.

(vi)

(IV) But as Fate would have it, the unexpected
happened and the Savarkar brothers were released from
the cellular jail after some twelve years of transporta-
tion and were shipped back to India., but only to be
locked up again behind the prison bars of Indian jails !

In those days there were a number of Congressite
political prisoners also in the Indian jails for short
terms of imprisonment, where Veer Savarkar was
transferred from time to time. The Congressite poli-
tical prisoners had special facilities which included
writing materials. Due to this fact, inspite of his being
treated and confined apart as a revolutionary prisoner
under special restrictions, he found it feasible to get
hold now and then of real paper and pencils !

He immediately wrote out this treatise on ' Hindu-
tva, ' all undetected by jail officials and through vari-
ous surreptitious channels parts of it continued to be
cleverly smuggled out of those Indian Prison walls till
at last the whole work reached its Destination.

Soon afterwords it was in 1923 that the first edi-
tion of this book on ' Hindutva ' was brought out by
Shri. V. V. Kelkar, B. A., LL. B., advocate, Nagpur. As
Veer Savarkar was still in prison the author's name
was not published. The book appeared under the
' non-de-plume ' ' A Marat ha '

Even though it was thus shorn of the halo which
would have invested it, had it been associated with the
name of its illustrious author, yet the book was wel-
comed with unbounded enthusiasm by the Hindu
Sanghastanist public. Such eminent Hindu leaders as

the late Lala Lajpatrai, Pt. Mad an Mohan Malaviya
and several others hailed it as the most original and
scholarly contribution to the Hindu Idealogy. The
definition acted as does some scientific discovery of a
new truth in re-shaping and re-co-ordinating all current
Thought & Action. Torn, broken up and confined in
water-tight compartments, the Hindus themselves had
come to doubt if they were a homogeneous people at
all. To them the book came as a veritable Revelation !
For it revealed to them their real National-Self, in
which and through which consciously or unconsciously
they lived and moved and had their organic Being. At
its touch arose an organic order where a chaos of castes
and creeds ruled. The definition provided a broad basic
foundation on a bed-rock on which a consolidated and
mighty Hindu Nation could take a secure stand. It
was later on adopted by the Hindu Mahasabha itself
as its authoritative definition of Hindutva.

Out of numerous tributes paid to the author of
this book we cull and cite only two. Wrote the late
Swami Shraddhanandaji

" It must have been one of those Vaidic
dawns indeed which inspired our Seers with
new (ruths, that revealed to the author of
' Hindutva ' this ' Mantra ' this definition
of Hindutva! !"

Shri Vijayaraghavacharyaji, the Grand old man of
South India who presided once over the National
Congress and once over the Hindu Mahasabha also

( viii )

has only recently read this book. He writes thus in
his letter dated the 9-4-1941 from Salem :—

"I have rapidly run through' Hindu cva. '
Especially the last chapter is inimitably patri-
otic. I am afraid I am unable to find suitable
words to describe my ideas regarding the
book, especially the last chapter. I congra-
tulate the author from the bottom of my
heart on the excellence of his work and
prayer-fully wish him long life and health."

THANKS

[ received some letters and personal requests from
scholars, and admirers of Veer Savarkar for copies of
'Hindutva'. I had to reply to them In the negative as
copies were not available. I used to feel sorry to say no!
I had no capital to publish a new edition and the demand
was not so much as to pay the expenses of printing!
One day when I was discussing the propagation of
Veer Savarkar's ideology with one of his admirers he
said he would give Rs. one thousand as a loan to print
this book ! I took that loan and went to Shri. Bhave, of
Bhave (P) Ltd., just to enquire whether he would print
the book for me. He said he would not print one
thousand copies. He would not undertake such a small
order. Such books should be printed and distributed
like the Bible. I told him that he had expressed the very
feelings that I and many others had in their hearts.
But how could I give effect to them ? Shri Bhave said he
would do it. He is wellknown in the printing world of
Maharashtra for his big plans, new ideas and effecient
execution and generous nature. Because of his co-opera-
tion and determination I have been able to publish this
edition 1 1 have no words to thank him !! I must also
mention the names of Shri. G. M. Joshi, Shri. S. T.
Godbole, Shri. N. C. Athavale and other admirers of
Veer Savarkar for writing introduction, proof correction
and other work! Thanks are also due to the world-
admired artist Shri Raghuvir Mulgaonkar for the
colourful cover he has donated.

With a request to the readers to spread, propa-
gate and work for the success of * Hindutva' —

S. S. Savarkar
Publisher

Introduction

This is the fifth edition of Veer Savarkar* s Hindu-
tva. Much water has flowed under the bridge since the
first edition of the book was published in 1923. India has
got independence yet she is a weak nation in confron-
tation with a nuclear power. Yet Savarkar's book is for
all time. The principles inunciated in this book will guide
Hindus as well as non- Hindus of this country for cen-
turies to come. It is interesting to see how the predic-
tions made in this book have, without a single excep-
tion, come true.

Many scholars who had tried to define the terms,
Hindu and Hinduism, had failed in their attempts to
arrive at a satisfactory definition. They studied the
beliefs, manners and customs, rites and rituals of the
different castes and communities that call themselves
Hindus and found nothing common in them. The defini-
tions they offered were either too wide or too narrow,or
suffered from the faults of being negative definitions or
merely descriptions. Savarkar knew that, though there
were differences among the sects of Hindus, yet there
was a golden thread that kept them united. What was it
that bound them together? What were the distinguishing
features that made them feel that they were one
nation ? Savarkar applied his mind to this problem and
tried a different approach the historical one. His effor-
ts were richly rewarded. With his profound knowledge
of the vedas, the mythology, the epics and the history

of India as well as those of other countries he found
that the use of the word Hindu is as old as the Rigveda
itself, and is associated with the Jand of the Indus. He
gives numerous quotations in this book from the oldest
holy books of the Hindus, the Vedas, puranas, medie-
val poetry, the works of Sikh Gurus, modern history and
conclusively proves that the Hindus have always used
the term, Hindu, proudly to designate their nation. The
concept of Hindutva is Savarkar's own and corres-
ponds exactly to the definition of a nation in modern
political theory. The Hindus are tied together by bonds
of a common fatherland, ties of blood, a common
culture and civilization, common heroes, common
history and obove all, the will to remain united as a
nation. The London Times rightly styled Savarkar as
father of Hinduness.

Savarkar also insists that the term, Hinduism,
should include the beliefs of all the sects-both vaidic
and non-Vaidic, that call themselves Hindus, This
should remove the misgivings of our non- Vaidic breth-
ern; The Hindu Code does not define the term, but
gives a description and that too is negative. However,
the denotation of the term that it gives is exactly the
same as Savarkar' s definition.

Savarkar had a way of getting at the essential
reality of things. About common blood he says, "After
all there is throughout the world so far as man is
concerned but a single race-the human race, kept alive
by one common blood, the human blood. All other talk
is at best provisional, a makeshift, and only relatively

(xii)

true. Nature is constantly trying to overthrow the arti-
ficial brrriers you raise between race and race. Sexual
attraction has proved more powerful than the comm-
ands of all the prophets put together."

This was not merely a baffling academic problem
to which he tried to find a satisfactory solution, though
even from the academic point of view his contribution
is invaluable. He knew that India must stand or fall
with the fortunes of the Hindus. India is the fatherland
and the holy land of Hindus. Loyalty and devotion to
India would unite Hindus to achieve freedom and to
defend it against foreign aggression.

Loyalty to one's fatherland and loyalty to one's
holyland are the two great forces that govern the nati-
onal life of a country. When a person or a community
is torn between these two loyalties their actions are
unpredictable.

These are facts which every realist must take into
account. To prove his point Savarkar has given numer-
ous instances from world history. It was necessary to
make the Hiudus aware of these common bonds to
unite them and to fight fissiparous tendencies among
them. As a young man Savarkar was the leader of a
band of revolutionaries. He was released from the
Andaman jail in 1924 and was interned in Ratnagiri.
Owing to restrictions placed upon him he confined his
activities to bringing about a social revolution among
Hindus. When all restrictions upon him were withdrawn
in 1937 Hindus of all sects and creeds rallied round him
under the Pan-Hindu flag. He led the movement for the

(xiii)

freedom and integrity of India. When the Atlantic
charter was drafted and agreed upon he sent a cable to
president Roosevelt insisting that the Atlantic charter
should be made applicable to India. It was an act of
great diplomacy, for his demand caused a stir in Ame-
rica. Articles appeared in leading papers of that country
supporting India's demand for freedom. When the ques-
tion of giving the right of self-determination to Provi-
nces was being discussed between Mr- Cripps and Indian
leaders Savarkar, owing to his profound knowledge of
Indian history and his ability to interpret it accurately
could bluntly tell Mr. Cripps that it would take him
years to understand how Hindusthan-India was one
nation. Some Indian leaders, however, had a morbid
fear of weapons and the people who legally or illegally
used them. They were willing to concede the Muslim.,
League's demand for pakistan. When it was certain that
India would be partitioned, Savarkar in retaliation
led the movement for the vivisection of Pakistan itself.
Lord Mountbatten saw the justic of the demand and
forced Mr. Jinnah to agree to part with the Hindu
majority parts of Bengal & Punjab. In this way western
Bangal and eastern Punjab became parts of the Indian
Union. Under Savarkar's leadership Hindus had their
revenge.*

Savarkar is perfectly logical in his arguments. He
meets all objections dispassionately and logically. He is
able to convince his opponents because his own convi-
ctions are the result of deep study and clear thinking.
But once a theory is proved beyond doubt his writing
becomes emotional like that of a poet. His paragraph

(xiv)

on the blessings that God has showered upon this
country of ours reads like a hymn from the Rigveda.
His appeal to the Hindus is immensely insipring.

Savarkar was an idealist without being a vision-
ary. He foresees the day when cultural and religious
bigotry will disband its forces pledged to aggressive
egoism and religions will cease to be 'isms' and will
become the common fund of eternal princiciples that
lie at the root of all; that will be a common foundation
on which the 'Human State' will majestically and
finally rest. '

Bombay 28

28 May 1966 G. ML Joshi.

(Veer Savarkar 's birthday).

Essentials of Hindutva

What is In a name ?

We hope that the fair Maid of Verona who made
the impassioned appeal to her lover to change 'a name
that was * nor hand, nor foot, nor arm, nor face, nor
any other part belonging to a man' would forgive us for
this our idolatrous attachment to it when we make bold
to assert that, 'Hindus we are and love to remain so! '
We too would, had we been in the position of that good
Friar, have advised her youthful lover to yield to the
pleasing pressure of the logic which so fondly urged
' What's in a name ? That which we call a rose would
smell as sweet by any other name!' For, things do
matter more than their names, especially when you have
to choose one only of the two, or when the association
between them is either new or simple. The very fact that
a thing is indicated by a dozen names in a dozen human
tongues disarms the suspicion that there is an invariable
connection or natural concomitance between sound
and the meaning it conveys. Yet, as the association of
the word with the thing it signifies grows stronger and
lasts long, so does the channel which connects the two
states, of consciousness tend to allow an easy flow of
thoughts from one to the other, till at last it seems almost
impossible to separate them. And when in addition to
this a number of secondary thoughts or feelings that are

2 HINDUTVA

generally roused by the thing get mystically entwined with
the word that signifies it, the name seems to matter as
much as the thing itself. Would the fair Apostle of the
creed that so movingly questioned * What's in a name?*
have liked it herself to nickname the God of her idola-
try as ' Paris * instead of * Romeo ' ? Or would "he have
been ready to swear by the moon that 'tipped.with silver
all the fruit tree-tops,' that it would serve as sweet and
musical to his heart to call his 'Juliet' by ' any other
name ' such as for example - ' Rosalind ? ' Nay more ;
there are words which imply an idea in itself extremely
complex or an ideal or a vast and abstract generalization
and which seem to take, as it were, a being unto them-
selves or live and grow as an organism would do. Such
names though they be 'nor hand, nor foot, nor any other
part belonging to a man,' are not all that, precisely
because they are th« very soul of man. They become the
idea itself and live longer than generations of man do.
Jesus died but Christ has survived the Roman Emperors
and that Empire. Inscribe at the foot of one of those
beautiful paintings of 'Madonna' the name of 'Fatima'
and a Spaniard would keep gazing at it as curiously as
at any other piece of art; but just restore the name of
c Madonna ' instead, and behold his knees would lose
their stiffness and bend, his eyes their inquisitiveness
and turn inwards in adoring recognition, and his whole
being get suffused with a consciousness of the presence
of Divine Motherhood and Love ! What is in a name ?
Ah ! call Ayodhya, Honolulu, or nickname her immor-
tal Prince, a Pooh Bah, or ask the Americans to change
Washington into a Chengizkhan, or persuade a Moha-

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 3

mmedan to call himself a Jew, and you would soon find
that the ' open sesame ' was not the only word of its
type.

Hindutva is different from Hinduism

To this category of names which have been to
mankind a subtle source of life and inspiration belongs
the word Hindutva, the essential nature and significance
of which we have to investgate into. The ideas and
ideals, the systems and societies, the thoughts and
sentiments which have centered round this name are so
varied and rich, so powerful and so subtle, so elusive
and yet so vivid that the term Hindutva defies all
attempts at analysis. Forty centuries, if not more, had
been at work to mould it as it is. Prophets and poets,
lawyers and law-givers, heroes and historians, have
thought, lived, fought and died just to have it spelled
thus. For indeed, is it not the resultant of countless
actions — now conflicting, now commingling, now co-
operating — of our whole race ? Hindutva is not a word
but a history. Not only the spiritual or religious history
of our people as at times it is mistaken to be by being
confounded with the other cognate term Hinduism, but
a history in full. Hinduism is only a derivative, a frac-
tion, a part of Hindutva. Unless it is made clear what is
meant by the latter the first remains unintelligible and
vague. Failure to distinguish between these two terms has
given rise to much misunderstanding and mutual suspi-
cion between soxne of those sister communities that have
inherited this inestimable and common treasure of our
Hindu civilization. What is the fundamental difference

4 HINMTTVA

in the meaning of these two words would be clear as
our argument proceeds. Here it is enough to point out
that Hindutva is not identical with what is vaguely
indicated by the term Hinduism. By an 'ism' it is gene-
rally meant a theory or a code more or less based on
spiritual or religious dogma or system. But when we
attempt to investigate into the essential significance
of Hindutva we do not primarily — and certainly not
mainly — concern ourselves with any particular
theocratic or religious dogma or creed. Had not linguistic
usage stood in our way then s Hinduness ' would have
certainly been a better word than Hinduism as a near
parallel to Hindutva. Hindutva embraces all the depart-
ments of thought and activity of the whole Being of our
Hindu race. Therefore, to understand the significance of
this term Hindutva, we must first understand the essen-
tial meaning of the word Hindu itself and realize how it
came to exercise such imperial sway over the hearts of
millions of mankind and won a loving allegiance from
the bravest and best of them. But before we can do that,
k is imperative to point out that we are by no means
attempting a definition or even a description of the
more limited, less satisfactory and essentially sectarian
term Hinduism. How far we can succeed or are justified
in doing that would appear as we proceed.

What is a Hindu ?

Although it would be hazardous at the present stage
of oriental research to state definitely the period when
the foremost band of the intrepid Aryans made it their
home and lighted their first sacrificial fire on the banks

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 5

of the Sindhu, the Indus, yet certain it is that long
before the ancient Egyptians, and Babylonians had built
their magnificent civilization, the holy waters of the
Indus were daily witnessing the lucid and curling colu-
mns of the scented sacrificial smokes and the valleys
resounding with the chants of Vedic hymns- the spiritual
fervour that animated their souls. The adventurous valour
that propelled their intrepid enterprizes, the sublime
heights to which their thoughts rose-all these had
marked them out as a people destined to Jay the founda-
tion of a great and enduring civilization. By the time
they had definitely cut themselves aloof from their
cognate and neighbouring people especially the Persians,
the Aryans, had spread out to the farthest of the seven
rivers, Sapta Sindhus', and not only had they deve-
loped a sense of nationality but had already succeeded
in giving it ' a local habitation and a name ! * Out of
their gratitude to the genial and perennial network of
waterways that ran through the land like a system of
nerve- threads and wove them into a Being, they very
naturally took to themselves the name of Sapta
Sindhus an epithet that was applied to the whole of
Vedic India in the oldest records of the world, the
Rigveda itself. Aryans or the cultivators as they essen-
tially were, we can well understand the divine love and
homage they bore to these seven rivers presided over by
the River, 'the Sindhu', which to them were but
a visible symbol of the common nationality and culture.

1 *rerftre

ft HINDUTVA

The Indians in their forward march had to meet
many a river as genial and as fertilizing as these but
never could they forget the attachment they felt and the
homage they paid to the Sapta Sindhus which had
welded them into a nation and furnished the name
which enabled their forefathers to voice forth their
sense of national and cultural unity. Down to this day
a Sindhu2- a Hindu- wherever he may happen to be,
will gratefully remember and symbolically invoke the
presence of these rivers that they may refresh and
purify his soul.

vi *r *rJt *R^ ^ro^fa ^Ta"^ ?<fr*f *^crr q^zrr i

Not only had these people been known to them-
selves as 'Sindhus' but we have definite records to
show that they were known to their surrounding
nations-at any rate to one of them-by that very
name, 'Sapta Sindhu* The letter 's'3 in Sanskrit is at
times changed into h4 in some of the Prakrit langua-
ges, both Indian and non-Indian. For example, the
word Sapta5 has become Hapta6 not only in Indian
Prakrits but also in the European languages too; we
have Hapta7 /. e., week, in India and ' Heptarchy '

2 ftnj-% 3 sr 4 ^ 5to 6 ^ 7 ^err

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA f

in Europe, Kesari8 in Sanskrit becomes Kehari9 in
old Hindi, Saraswatiio becomes Harhvatin in
Persian and Asuru becomes AhurJ2 And then we
actually find that the Vedic name of our nation Sapta
Sindhu had been mentioned as Hapta Hindu in the
A vesta by the ancient Persian people. Thus in the very
dawn of history we find ourselves belonging to the
nation of the Sindhus or Hindus and this fact was well
known to our learned men even in the Puranic period-
In expounding the doctrine that many of the Mle-
chhais tongues had been but the mere offshoots of the
Sanskrit language the Bhavishya PuranH clearly cites
this fact and says —

srrq- ^§ urea fe t^^t fm^f^ts-JTsr^ n

c

Thus knowing for certain that the Persians used to
designate the Vedic Aryans as Hindus and knowing also
the fact that we generally call a foreign and unknown
people by the term by which they are known to those
through whom we come to know them, we can safely
conclude that most of the remoter nations that flouri-
shed then must have applied the same epithet 'Hindu '
to our land and people as the ancient Persians did. Not

8 %*rft 9 %?ft 1 *TCWcfV 1 1 ^cft
12 3T*( 3ffT 13 **N3 14 srfe^r 3*T*r.

g HINDUTVA

only' that but even in the very region of the Sapta
Sindhus the thinly scattered native tribes too, must have
been knowing the Aryans as Hindus in the local dialects
in accordance with the same linguistic law. Further on,
as the Vedic Sanskrit began to give birth to the Indian
Prakrits which became the spoken tongues of the majo-
rity of the decendants of these very Sindhus as well as
the assimilated and the crossborn castes, these too might
lisave called themselves as Hindus without any influence
from the foreign people. For the Sanskrit S changes into
H as often in Indian Prakrits as in the non-Indian
ones. Therefore, so far as definite records are concerned,
it is indisputably clear that the first and almost the
cradle name chosen by the patriarchs of our race to
designate our nation and our people, is Sapta Sindhu
or Hapta Hindu and that almost all nations of the then
known world seemed to have known us by this very
epithet, Sindhus or Hindus.

Name older still

So far we have been treading on solid ground of
recorded facts, but now we cannot refrain ourselves from
making an occasional excursion into the borderland of
conjecture. So far we have not pinned our faith to any
theory about the original home of the Aryans. But if
the most widely accepted theory of their entrance into
India be relied on, then a natural curiosity arises as to
the origin of the names by which they called the new
scenes of their adopted home. Did they coin all those
names from their own tongue ? Could they have done
so ? Is it not generally true that when we meet a new

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 9

scene or enter a new country we call them by the very
names-may be in a slightly changed form so as to spit
our vocal ability or taste -by which they are known to
the native people there? Of course, at times we love
to call new scenes by names redolent with the memory
of the clear old ones -especially when new colonies aie
being established in a virgin and but thinly populated
continent. But this explanation could only be satis-
factory when it is proved that the name given to the
new place already existed in the old country and even
then it could not be denied that the other process of
calling new scenes by the names which they already
bear is more universally followed. Now we know it for
certain that the region of the Sapta Sindhus was, tho-
ugh very thinly, populated by scattered tribes. Some of
them seem to have been friendly towards the newcomers
and it is almost certain that many an individual had
served the Aryans as guides and introduced them to
the names and nature of the new scenes to which the
Aryans could not be but local strangers. The Vidya-
dharas, Apsaras, Yakshas, Rakshas, Gandharvas and
Kinnarasi5 were not all or altogether inimical to the
Aryans as at times they are mentioned as being bene-
volent and good-natured folks. Thus it is probable
that many names given to these great rivers by the
original inhabitants of the soil may have been
sanskritised and adopted by the Aryans. We have
numerous proofs of this nature in the assimilative
expansion of those people and their tongues; witness

1 5 f^I^TO^^^mfoSTCT: I

10 HINDUTVA

the words Shalakantakata,i6 Malaya, Milind, Alasada,
(Alexandria) Suluva (Selucus) etc. If this be true
then it is quite probable that the great Indus was
known as Hindu to the original inhabitants of our
land and owing to vocal peculiarity of the Aryans
it got changed into Sindhu when they adopted
it by the operation of the same rule that S is the
Sanskritised equivalent of H. Thus Hindu would be the
name that this land and the people that inhabited it
bore from time so immemorial that even the Vedic
name Sindhu is but a later and secondary form of it.
If the epithet Sindhu dates its antiquity in the glimmer-
ing twilight of history then the word Hindu dates
its antiquity from a period so remoter than the first
that even mythology fails to penetrate - to trace it
to its source.

Hindus, a nation

The activities of so intrepid a people as the
Sindhus or Hindus could no longer be kept cooped or
cabined wilhin the narrow compass of the Panchanad
or the Punjab. The vast and fertile plains farther off
stood out inviting the efforts of some strong and
vigorous race. Tribe after tribe of the Hindus issued
forth form the land of their nursery and led by the
consciousness of a great mission and their Sacrificial
Fire that was the symbol thereof, they soon reclaimed
the vast, waste and but very thinly populated lands.
Forests were felled, agriculture flourished, cities rose,

16 ^^*£T, *r^r, fafa^, a^nsi, %?>?

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 11

kingdoms thrived, - the touch of the human hand
changed the whole face of the wild and unkemp
nature. But while these great deeds were being achieved
the Aryans had developed to suit their individualistic
tendencies and the demands of their new environments
a policy that was but loosely centralised. As time
piassed on, the distances of their new colonies increased,
and different peoples of other highly developed types
began to be incorporated into their culture, the
different settlements began to lead life politically
very much centred in themselves. The new attachments
thus formed, though they could not efface the
old ones, grew more and more pronounced and
powerful until the ancient generalizations and names
gave way to the new. Some called themselves Kurus,
others Kashis or Videhas or Magadhas while the
old generic name of the Sindhus or Hindus was
first overshadowed and then almost forgotten. Not
that the conception of a national and cultural unity
vanished, but it assumed other names and other
forms, the politically most important of them being
the institution of a Chakarvartin,i7 At last the great
mission which the Sindhus had undertaken of
founding a nation and a country, found and reached
its geographical limit when the valorous Prince of
Aypdhya made a triumphant entry in Ceylon and actu-
ally brought the whole land from the Himalayas to the
Seas under one sovereign sway. The day when the
Horse of Victory returned to Ayodhya unchallenged

17 ^^rfcf^

12 HINDUTVA

and unchallengeable, the great white Umbrella of Sover-
eignty was unfurled over that Imperial throne of
Ramchandra, the brave, Ramchandra the good, and a
loving allegiance to him was sworn, not only by the
Princes of Aryan blood but Hanuman, Sugriva, Bibhi-
shana from the south-that day was the real birth-day of
our Hindu people. It was truly our national day: for
Aryans and Anaryans knitting themselves into a people
were born as a nation. It summed up and politically
crowned the efforts of all the generations that preceded
it and it handed down a new and common mission,
a common banner, a common cause which all the
generations after it had consciously or unconsciously
fought and died to defend.

Other names

A synthetic conception gains in strength if it finds
a term comprehensive enough to give it an eloquent
expression. The terms Aryawarta]8 or Bramhawartais
were not so suitable as to express the vast
synthesis that embraced the whole continent from the
Indus to the sea and aimed to weld it into a nation.
Aryawarta as defined by the ancient writers was the
land that lay between the Himalayas and the Vindhya.20
Although it was best suited to the circumstances
which gave it birth, yet and therefore, it could not serve
as a common name to a people that had welded Aryans
and non-Aryans into a common race and had carried

18 STOrfatf 19 sf^t

ESSENTIALS OF HITsfDUTVA 13

their culture-empire far beyond the bending summits
of VindhyadrL This necessity of finding a suitable term
to express the expansive thought of an Indian Nation
was more or less effectively met when the House of
Bharat came to exercise its sway over the entire world.
Without entering into speculation as to who this Bharat
was the Vedic Bharat or the Jain one or what was
the exact period at which he ruled, it is here enough
for us to know that his name had been not only the
accepted but the cherished epithet by which the people
of Aryawarta and Daxinapatha2t delighted to call
their common motherland and their common cultural
empire. Thus as the horizon opened out to the South
we find that the centre of gravity had very naturally
shifted from the Sapta Smdhus to the Gangetic Delta
and the name Saptasindhu or Aryawavt or Daxinapath
gave way to the politically grander expression
Bharatkhanda22 which included in its sweep all that
lay between the Himalayas and the Seas. This is most
clearly indicated by the definition of our Nation
attempted at a period when the vast conception
must have been drawning over the minds of our great
thinkers. We have met with no better attempt to define
our position as a people than the terse littJe couplet
in the Vishu Puran, ' The land which is to the
north of the sea and to the south of the Himalaya
mountain is named Bharata inhabited by the descen-
dants of are Bharata23.

21 sfa*rre*r 22 ^crefe

14 HINDUTVA

( feojTjKTUT )

How Names Are Given

But this new word Bharatavarsha could not
altogether suppress our cradle name Sindhus or
Hindus nor could it make us forget the love we bore to
that River of rivers - the Sindhu at whose breast our
Patriarchs and people had drunk the milk of life. Our
frontier provinces which bordered the course of Indus
still clung to their ancient name Sindhu Rashtra.24
And throughout the Sanskrit literature we find
Sindhu Sauveers25 recognized as an integral and an im-
portant part of our body politic. In the great Maha-
bharata war the king of Sindhu Sauveer figures pro-
minently and is said to have been closely related to the
Bharatas. Although the limits of the Sindhu Rashtra
shifted from time to time, yet the language that the
people speak did then and does even now mark them
out as a people by themselves from Multan to the
sea, and the name ' Sindhi ' which it bears is an em-
phatic reminder that all those who speak it are Sindhus
and are entitled to be recognized as a geographical
and political unit in the commonwealth of our Indian
people. Although the epithet Bharatakhand succeeded
it almost overshadowing the cradle name of our nation
in India, yet the foreign nations seem to have cared

23 *rcit 24 ftr^rw 25' ftratf^tT

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 15

little for it and as our frontier provinces continued to
be known by their ancient name, so even our immediate
neighbours - the Avestic Persians, the Jews, the Greeks
and others clung to our ancient name Sindhus or
Hindus. They did not merely indicate the borderland
of Indus by this term as in days gone by, but the whole
nation into which the ancient Sindhus by expansion
and assimilation had grown. The Avestic Persians
know us as Hindus, the Greeks dropping the harsh
accent as Indos and through the Greeks almost all
Europe and later on America as Hindus or Indians,
Even Huen-tsang who lived so long with us persists in
calling us Shintus26 or Hintus.27- Barring a few
examples as that of Afganisthan being called as Shweta
Bharat28 by the Parthians, very rarely indeed had
the foreigners forgotten our cradle name or preferred
the new one Bharat to it. Down to this day the
whole world knows us as ' Hindus ? and our land as
' Hindusthan ' as if in fulfilment of the wishes of our
Vedic fathers who were the first to make that choice.

But a name by its nature is determined not so
much by what one likes to call oneself but generally by
what others like to do. In fact a name is called into
existence for this very purpose. Self is known to itself
immutable and without a name or even without a form.
But when it comes in contact or conflict with a non-self
then alone it stands in need of a name if it wants to
communicate with others or if others persist in commu-
nicating with it. It is a game that requires two to play

26 firs 27 f^ 28 ^r wts.

16 HINDUTVA

at. If the world insists that a teacher or a wit must
be handed down as an Ashtawakra29 or a Mulla
Dopyaja^o well then he, in spite of his liking, is very
likely to be remembered as such. If the name chosen
by the world for us is not directly against our liking
then it is yet more likely to shadow all other names.
We might bear witness Page,3i Mujumdar, Peshawe.
But if the world hits upon the word by which they
would know us as one redolent of our glory or our
early love then that word is certain not only to shadow
but to survive every other name we may have. This
fact added to the circumstances which brought us
first into close contact and then into a fierce conflict
with the world at large, soon enabled the epithet
Hindu to assert itself once more and so vigorously as
to push into the background even the well beloved
name of Bharatakhanda itself.

International Life

Although Indians were by no means cut off from
the outside world before the rise of Buddhism and
although their world activities had already assumed
such dimensions as to give a just occasion to our
patriotic poet law-givers to claim

' ^t^rsr^rw *m?nT^r*r?r: i

[ Let all the people of the world learn their duties from
the elders born in this land ] ; yet as far as the present

29 a^T^ 30 *r?<*r <ct PTTsrr 31 qw, ?^r, fcrir

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 17

argument is concerned, the international life of India
after the rise of Buddhism, requires chiefly to be consi-
dered, because it was about this time when political
enterprise having exposed or exhausted all possibilities
of expansion in our own land naturally began to over-
flow its limits to an extent unevidenced before and the
communications with the outsiders began to knock at
our doors more impudently and even imperatively than
they ever had done. In addition to these political
developments the great and divine mission that set in
motion 'the wheel of the law of Righteousness' made
India the very heart-the very soul-of almost all the
then known world. To countless millions of human
souls from Misar to Mexico, the land of the Sindhus
came to be the land of their Gods and Godmen. Thou-
sands of pilgrims form distant shores poured into this
country and thousands of scholars, preachers, sages
and saints went from this land to all the then known
world. But as the outside world persisted in recognizing
us by our ancient name 'Sindbu' or 'Hindu' both these
in-coming and out-going processes helped mightily to
render that epithet to be the most prominent of our
national names. The necessity of political and diplo-
matic correspondence with various states, who knew us
as Hindus or Indus, must also have, by making it
incumbent on our people to respond to it, revived the
use of this epithet first side by side with and then at
times even instead of the name Bharatkhand.

But if the rise of Buddhism has thus enabled this
epithet to grow in prominence throughout the world

18 HINJMJTVA

and made us more and more conscious of ourselves as
Hindus, then strange to say the fall of Buddhism only
carried this process further than ever.

Fall of Buddhism

We fear that the one telling factor that contributed
to the fall of Buddhism more than any other has
escaped that detailed attention of scholars which it
deserves. But as the subject in hand does but remotely
involve its treatment here we cannot treat it here in
full. All that we can do here is to make a few general
remarks and leave them to be expounded and detailed
out to a more favourable occasion if the work be not
done by others better fitted to do it. Can it be that
philosophical differences alone could have made our
nation turn against Buddhism ? Not wholly : for, these
differences had been there all along and even flourished
side by side with each other. Can it be the general
inanition and demoralization of the Buddhistic Church
itself ? Not wholly ; for, if some of the Viharas sheltered
a loose, lazy and promiscuous crowd of men and
women who lived on others and spent what was not
theirs on disreputable persuits of life, yet on the other
hand the line of those spiritual giants of Arhat and
Bhikkus had not altogether ended : nor had such scenes
been peculiar to the Buddhistic Viharas alone ! All these
and many other shortcomings would not have attra-
cted such fierce attention and proved fatal to Buddhistic
power in India had not the political consequences of
the Buddhistic expansion been so disastrous to the
national virility and even the national existence of our

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 19

race. No prelude to a vast tragedy could be more
dramatic in its effect in foreshadowing the culminating
catastrophe than that incident in the life of the Shakya
Sinha, when the news of the fate of the little tribal
republic of the Shakyas was carried to their former
Prince when he was just laying the foundation stone of
the Buddhistic Church. He had already enrolled the
flower of his clan in his Bhikkusangha and the little
Shakya Republic thus deprived of its bravest and best,
fell an easy victim to the strong and warlike in the very
life time of the Shakya Sinha. The news when carried
to him is said to have left the Enlightened unconce-
rned. Centuries rolled on; the Prince of the Shakyas
had grown into the Prince of Princes-the Lokajit-the
great conqueror of worlds. The confines of his little
Shakya State expanded and embraced the confines of
India; and as if to give a touch of poetical precision
and poetical justice, the woeful fate that had overtaken
the tribal republic of Kapil-Vastu befell the whole of
Bharatvarsha itself and it fell an easy prey to the strong
and warlike-not like Shakyas to their own kith and
kin-but the Lichis and Huns. Of course the Enlight-
ened would perhaps remain as unaffected as ever, even
if this news could ever reach him like the first. But
the rest of Hindus then could not drink with equani-
mity this cup of bitterness and political servitude at
the hands of those whose barbarous violence could still
be soothed by the mealy-mouthed formulas of
Ahimsa32 and spiritual brotherhood, and whose steel

32 arf^TT

20 HINDUTVA

could still be blunted by the soft palm leaves and
rhymed charms. We do not mean to underrate-much less
accuse-the services of the great brotherhood and its
divine mission- We have only to point out the
concomitance that is too glaring to escape the attention
of any student of history. We know that it could
easily be pressed against this statement that the greatest
and even the most powerful Indian Kings and Emp-
erors known, belong to the Buddhist period. Yes, but
known to whom ?-to Europeans and those of us who
have unconsciously imbibed not only their thoughts
but even their prejudices. There was a time when every
school history in India opened from the Mohammedan
invasion because the average English writers of that
time knew next to nothing of our earlier life. Lately
the general knowledge of Europe has extended back-
wards to the rise of Buddhism and we too are apt to
look upon it as the first and even the most glorious
epoch of our history. The fact is, it is neither. We
yield to none in our love, admiration and respect
for the Buddha-the Dharma-the Sangha. They are
all ours. Their glories are ours and ours their failures.
Great was Ashoka, the Devapriya, and greater were the
achievements of Buddhistic Bhikkus. But achievements
as great if not greater and things as holy and more
politic and statesmanly had gone before them and
indeed enabled them to be what they were. So, we do
not think that the political virility or the manly nobility
of our race began and ended with the Mauryas alone
-or was a consequence of their embracing Buddhism.
Buddhism has conquests to claim but they belong to a

ESSENTIALS rOF HINDUTVA 21

world far removed from this our matter-of-fact world-
where feet of clay do not stand long, and steel could be
easily sharpened, and trishna33-thirst-is too powerful
and real to be quenched by painted streams that flow
perennially in heavens. These must have been the
considerations that must have driven themselves home
to the hearts of our patriots and thinkers when the
Huns and Shakas poured like volcanic torrents and
burnt all that thrived. The Indians saw that the cherish-
ed ideals of their race-their thrones and their families
and the very Gods they worshipped-were trampled under
foot, the holy land of their love devastated and sacked
by hordes of barbarians, so inferior to them in language,
religion, philosophy, mercy and all the soft and human
attributes of man and God-but superior to them in
strength alone — strength that summed up its creed,
in two words — Fire and Sword ! The inference was
clear- Clear also was the fact that Buddhistic logic had
no argument that could efficiently meet this new and
terrible dualism -this strange Bible of Fire and Steel,
So the leaders of thought and action of our race had to
rekindle their Sacrificial Fire to oppose the sacrilegious
one and to re-open the mines of Vedic fields for steel, to
get it sharpened on the altar of Kali34, ' the Terrible
so that Mahakal35— the ' Spirit of Time ' be appeased.
Nor were their anticipations belied. The success of
the renovated Hindu arms was undisputed and
indisputable. Vikramaditya who drove the foreigners
from the Indian soil and Lalitaditya who caught

33 er^TT 34 *T?ft 35 Jr^ra

22 HINBUTVA

and chastised them in their very dens from Tartary to
Mongolia were but complements of each other.
Valour had accomplished what formulas had failed to
Once more the people rose to the heights of great-
ness that shed its lustre on all departments of life.
Poetry and philosophy, art and architecture, agriculture
and commerce, thought and action felt the quickening
impulse which consciousness of independence strength
and victory alone can radiate. The reaction as usual
was complete even to a fault. ' Up with the Vedic
Dharma ! * * Back to the Vedas ! ' The national cry grew
louder and louder, more and more imperative, because
this was essentially a political necessity.

Buddhism - a universal religion

Buddhism had made the first and yet the greatest
attempt to propagate a universal religion. ' Go, ye
Bhikkus, to all the ten directions of the world and
preach the law of Righteousness ! ' Truly, it was a law
of Righteousness. It had no ulterior end in view, no
lust for land or lucre quickening its steps; but grand
though its achievements were it could not eradicate
the seeds of animal passions nor of political ambitions
nor of individual aggrandisement in the minds of all
men to such an extent as to make it safe for India to
change her sword for a rosary. Even then, to set an
example, did India declare her will to ' take more
pleasure in the conquest of peace and righteousness
than in the conquest of arms. ' Nobly she tried : Ah !
so nobly as to make herself ridiculous in the eyes of
lust and lucre. Had she not issued. Royal edicts to

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 23

the effect that the very water be strained before it was
poured out for horses and elephants to drink, so as to
enable the tiny lives in the waters to escape immediate
death ? And had she not opened corn^throwing centres
in the midst of the seas that fish be fed in the oceans
of the world ? Nor bad the very fish ceased to feed on
each other ! Nobly did she try to kill killing by getting
killed - and at last found out that palm leaves at times
are too fragile for steel ! As long as the whole world
was red in tooth and claw .and the national and racial
distinction so strong as to make men brutal, solongif
India had to live at all a life whether spiritual or poli-
tical according to the right of her soul, she must not
lose the strength born of national and racial cohesion.
So the leaders of thought and action grew sick of
repeating the mumbos and jumbos of universal
brotherhood and bitterly complained :

^far *rfa^rr^ <ti<tt: fr far ^ ^ ipu

^r^r^nrrrf^ f^#^5T«*ta?tssrcfteRr 11311 (*pn"^r)

(1 ) Those that were killed by you, O God, and the
Asuras killed by Vishnu are once again born on
this earth in the form of the Mlencchas.

(2) They kill the Brahmans, destroy the religious rites
like the sacrifices, abduct the daughters of the
sages ; what sins do they not commit !

24 HINDUTVA

(3) If" the earth is conquered by the Mlecchas this
land of the gods will perish, because of the
abolishing of sacrifices and other religious rites.

(Gunadhya)

and when the barbarian hordes of the Shakas and the
Huns - who had ravaged their fair land that had in
utter confidence clad herself in a Bhikku's dress'
changed her sword for rosary and had taken to the
vows of Ahimsa and nonviolence - were expelled
beyond the Indus and further, and a strong national
state was firmly established, then it was but natural
that the leaders of our race should have realised what
an immense amount of strength could be derived if but
the new national State was backed up by a Church as
intensely national.

Moreover everything that is common in us with
our enemies, weakens our power of opposing them.
The foe that has nothing in common with us is the
foe likely to be most bitterly resisted by us just as a
friend that has almost everything in him that we
admire and prize in ourselves is likely to be the friend
we love most. The necessity of creating a bitter sense
of wrong and invoking a power of undying resistance
especially in India that had under the opiates of
Universalism and non-violence lost the faculty even of
resisting sin and crime and aggression, could best be
accomplished by cutting off even the semblance of a
common worship - a common Church which required
her to clasp the hand of those as her co-religionists
whose had been the very hand that had strangled her

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 25

as a nation. What was the use of a universal faith that
instead of soothening the ferociousness and brutal
egoism of other nations only excited their lust by
leaving India defenceless and unsuspecting ? No; the
only safe-guards in future were valour and strength
that could only bs born of a national self-conscious-
ness. She had poured her life's blood for sophistry
that tried to prove otherwise !

Then came reaction !

The reaction against universal tendencies of
Buddliism only grew more insistent and powerful as
the attempt to re-establish the Buddhist power in
India began to assume a more threatening attitude.
Nationalist tendencies refused to barter with our
national independence and accept a foreign conqueror
as our overlord. But if that foreign invader happened
to be favourably inclined towards Buddhism, then
he was sure to find some secret sympathisers among the
Indian Buddhists all over India, even as Catholic Spain
could always find some important section in England
to sympathise with their efforts to restore a Catholic
dynasty in England. Not only this but dark hints
abound in our ancient records to show that at times
some foreign Buddhistic powers had actually invaded
India with an express national and religious aim in
view. We cannot treat the history of this period
exhaustively h£re but can only point to the half sym-
bolic and half actual description given in one of our
Puranas of the war waged on the Aryadeshajas36 by
the Nyanapati37 ( the king of the Huns ) and his

26 HINDUTVA

Buddhistic allies. The record tells us in a mythological
strain how a big battle was fought on the banks of the
river 'Haha,38 how the Buddhistic forces made
China the base of thcr opera tions,how they were reinfo-
rced by contingents from many Buddhistic nations :

36 arnf^Fsrr: 37 ^nrrRr 38 ^r

[ There appeared for battle a hundred thousand
soldiers from Shymadesh as also from Japdesh, and
millions from china. ]

and how after a tough fight the Buddhists lost it and
paid heavily for their defeat. They had formally to
renounce all ulterior national aims against India and
give a pledge that they would never again enter India
with any political end in view. The Buddhists as
individuals had nothing to fear from India, the land of
toleration, but they should give up all dreams of
endangering the national life of India and her indepen-
dence:

srfrTCT'm)
[ All the Buddhists swore there and then that they
would not come to the Aryadesh with any territorial
designs. ] ( Bhavishya-Purana Pratisarga-Parva )

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 27

Institutions in favour of Nationality

And thus we find that institutions that were the
peculiar marks of our nation were revived :- The
system of four varnas39 which could not be wiped away
even under the Buddhistic sway, grew in popularity to
such an extent that kings and emperors felt it a
distinction to be called one who established the system
of four varnas40 ^ftHTq"cf aT5n**=r) -'^^s^^m.
STcJtl^^P * ( TER"cT cTi^a: ) Reaction in favour of this
institution grew so strong that our nationality was
almost getting identified with it. Witness the definition
that tries to draw a line of demarcation between us
and foreigners

From this it was but a natural step to prohibit our
people from visiting shores which were uncongenial-in
some cases fiercely hostile -to such peculiar institutions
as these and where our people could not be expected
to receive the protection that would enable them to
keep up the spirit and the letter of our faith. Reckless as
the reaction was, perfectly intelligible when viewed at
politically ; for do we not frequently meet with
patriotic thinkers even now in our land who would
stand for laws prohibiting our men from emigrating to
nations where they are sure to be subjected to national
disabilities and dishonours ?

39 ^ofsq^fm^T^T: I 40 ^l^^T

28 HINDUTVA

Commingling of Races

Thus it was political and national necessity that
was at once the cause and the effect of the decline of
Buddhism in India. Buddhism had its geographical
centre of gravity nowhere. So it was an imperative
need to restore at least the national centre of gravity
that India had lost in attempting to get identified with
Buddhism. When the nation grew intensely self-con-
scious as an organism would do and whs in direct
conflict with the non-self it instinctively turned to draw
the line of division and mark well the position it
occupied so as to make it clear to themselves where
they exactly stood and to the world how they were
unmistakably a people by themselves-not only a racial
and national, but even a geographical and political
unit. On the southern side of our country the natural
and strategic limits were already reached, sanctioned
and sanctified. The frame-work of the deep and bounds-
less seas in which our southern peninsula is set is
almost poetical in its grace and perfection. The
Samudrarashana4i had pleased the eyes of generations
of our poets and patriots. But on the north-western
side of our nation the commingling of races was
growing rather too unceremonious to be healthy and
our frontiers too shifty to be safe. Therefore it would
have been a matter of surprise if the intense spirit of
self-assertion that had found so benign an asylum
under the patronage of the Mahakal of Ujjain had not

41 jprsrafHT

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 29

made our patriots turn to this pressing necessity of
drawing a frontier line for us that would be as vivid as
effective. And what could that line be but the vivacious
yet powerful stream — the River of rivers-the 'Sindhu' ?
The day on which the patriarchs of our race had crossed
that stream they ceased to belong to the people they had
definitely left behind and laid the foundation of a new
nation — were reborn into a new people that, under the
quieting star of a new hope and new a mission, were
destined by assimilation and by expansion to grow into
a race and a new polity that could only be most
fittingly and feelingly described as Sindhu or Hindu

Back to the Vedas

Nor was this attempt to identify our frontier line
with the river Indus an innovation. In fact it was but
the natural consequence of the great war-cry of the
national revivalists 'Back to the Vedas. ' The Vedic
State based on and backed up by the Vedic Church
must be designated by the Vedic name, and— so far
as it was then possible — identified with the Vedic lines.
And this process of events which the very general trend
of history ^should have enabled us to anticipate seems
to have actually gone through. For one of patriotic
Puranas42 assures us that Shalivahan the grandson of
the great Vikramaditya after having defeated the
second attempt of foreigners to rush in and expelled
them beyond the Indus, issued a Royal Decree to the
effect that thenceforth the Indus should constitute the

42 JTFT

30 HINDUTVA

line of demarcation between India and other non-
Indian nations.

1 There-after the grandson of Vikramaditya,
Shalivahan, ascended the throne of his forfathers.

2 Having Conquered the irresistible Shakas, the
Chinese, the Tartars, the Balhikas, Kamrupas, Romans,
Khorajas and Shathas and

3 Having seized their treasures and punishing the
offenders he demarcated the boundaries of the Aryans
and the Mlecchas.

4 The best country of the Aryans is known as
Sindhusthan whereas the Mlecch country lies beynod the
Indus. This demarcation was made by that great king.

(Bhawishya Puran, Pratisarga-Parva)

Sindhusthan

The most ancient of the names of our country of
which we have a record is Saptasindhu or Sindhu. Even

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 31

Bharatvarsha is and must necessarily be a latter designa-
tion besides being personal in its appeal. The glories of
a person however magnificent, lose their glamour as
time passes on. The name that recommends itself by
appealing to such personal glories and achievements can
never be so effective and permanent a source of ever-
rising consciousness of gratitude and pride as a name
that besides being reminiscent of such national achieve-
ments and beloved personal touches, is in addition to it
associated with some great beneficent and perennial
natural phenomena. The Emperor Bharat is gone and
gone also is many an emperor as great ! — but the Sindhu
goes on for ever; for ever inspiring and fertilizing our
sense of gratitude, vivifying our sense of pride* renovat-
ing the ancient memories of our race — a sentinal keep-
ing watch over the destinies of our people. It is the
vital spinal cord that connects the remotest past to
the remotest future. The name that associates and
identifies our nation with a river like that, enlists nature
on our side and bases our national life on a foundation,
that is, so for as human calculation are concerned, as
lasting as eternity. All these considerations must have
fired the imagination of the then leaders of thought
and action and made them restore the ancient Vedic
name of our land and nation Sindhustan — the best
nation of Aryans.43

The epithet Sindhusthan besides being Vedic had
also a curious advantage which could only be called
lucky and yet is too substantial to be ignored. The word

43 W*Tpt**T ^TTR*r

32 HINDUTVA

Sindhu in Sanskrit does not only mean the Indus but
also the Sea-which girdles the southern peninsula— so
that this one word Sindhu points out almost all
frontiers of the land at a single stroke. Even if we do
not accept the tradition that the river Brahma putra44 | s
only a branch of the Sindhu which falls into flowing
streams on the eastern and western slopes of the
Himalayas and thus constitutes both our eastern as
well as western frontiers, still it is indisputably true
that it circumscribes our northern and western
extremities in its sweep and so the epithet Smdhusthan
calls up the image of our whole Motherland : the land
that lies between Sindhu and Sindhu — from the Indus
to the Seas.

What is Arya45

But it must not be supposed that the epithet
Sindhu recommended itself to our patriots only because
it was geographically the best fitted; for we find it
emphatically stated that the concept expressed by this
word was national and not merely geographical' Sindhu-
sthan was not merely a piece of land but it was a
nation46 which was ideally if not always actually a
state (rajnah-rashtram47). It also clearly followed that
the culture that flourished in Sindhusthan and the citi-
zens thereof were Sindhus even as they had been in the
Vedic days. Sindhusthan was the ' Best nation of the
Aryas' as distinguished from Mlechasthan48 the land

44 sr^jwr 45 srnf 46 xv&
47 xm: xr^ 48 *3^^ft.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 33

of the foreigners. However it must be clearly pointed
out that the definition is not based on any theological
hair-splittiug or religious fanaticism. The word Arya is
expressly stated in the very verses to mean ail those
who had been incorporated as parts integral in the
nation and people that flourished on this our side of
the Indus whether Vaidik^o or Avaidik, Bramhana or
Chandal, and owning and claiming to have inherited a
common culture, common blood, common country and
common polity; while Mlechcha also by the very fact
of its being put in opposition to Sindhuthan meant
foreigners nationally and racially and not necessarily
religiously.

Hindu & Hindusthan.

This Royal Decree was as all Royal Decrees in
Sindhusthan had generally been, the mere executive
outcome of a strong and popular movement. For, the
custom of looking upon Attock 50 as the veritable Indian
land's end as the very word Attock signifies could not
have been originated and observed so universally and
so long, had it not been inspired by and appealing to
our national imagination. This custom that is so
tenaciously and reverently observed by millions of
people, premiers and peasants alike, is a good proof
that strongly corroborates the fact that some such
royal edict sanctioning the identification of our frontiers
with the ancient Sindhu and associating the name of
our land and nation with it as Sindhusthan had actually

49 tfofr, srtfe^, st^ft, ^fsr^. 50 sr^

34 HINDUTVA

been issued; and that the highest religious sanctification
consecrating this royal sanction and popular will must
have enabled this attempt to restore the Vedic name of
our country to triumph in the end. Of course centuries
had yet to pass and momentous events to happen to
shape and mould the destinies of the words Sindhu and
Sindhusthan till they came to be as powerfully influential
as to colour the thought of our whole nation and be the
cherished possession of our race. But after all they
have done it and today we find that while thousands
would not know what Aryawarta or Bharatwarsha
exactly means yet the very man in the street will under-
stand and recognize the names Hindu and Hindusthan
as his very own. *

*The verses from Bhavishyapuran quoted above
seem to be quite trustworthy so far as their general
purport is concerned : Firstly because they record a
general tradition that, unlike dates or individual
successions, can easily be remembered longer. Secondly,
independently of that, the general trend of our history
as shown points to some such state of affairs. Thirdly,
it is not necessary here for our arguments to be very
precise either about the date of this Decree or even the
king by whom it was issued. And fourthly, the author
does not seem to have been writing about things only
haphazardly or to which he is entirely a stranger. For
the family table that he gives of the House of Vikrama-
ditya is again given in other part of the work and the
two agree closely with each other. The writer who
knows of details about the House is likely to know the

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 35

Reverence to Buddha

But before we proceed to state what further
developments the history of this epithet had to undergo
we feel it incumbent to render an apology to ourselves.
We have while writing this section wounded our own
feelings. So we hasten to add that the few harsh words
we had to say in explaining the political necessity that
led to the rejection of Buddhism in India should not be

SALIENT facts of the most distinguished king that
belonged to it.

After all, the main resources of our history had
been and must ever be our national traditions remem-
bered or recorded in our ancient puranas, epics and
literature. Their details may be challenged, their dates
determined and rejected, but on account of discre-
pancies here or miraculous colouring there which are in
fact common to all ancient records of mankind, we
cannot dismiss them altogether, especially where the
acts recorded have not an impossible or unnatural
element in them or when they do not contradict events
otherwise proved to be indisputably true. The habit of
doubting everything in the Puranas till it has been
corroborated by some foreign evidence is absurd. The
sounder process would be to depend on our works
especially where general traditons and events are
concerned till they are found to be unreliable in the
light of any more weighty and less ambiguous evidence
and not simply on account of the airy imaginings of
some one to whom it does not seem probable. Take

36 HINDUTVA

understood to mean that we have not a very high
opinion of that Church as a whole ! No, no ! I am as
humble an admirer and an adorer of that great and
holy Sangha the hoiiest the world has ever seen, as any of
its initiated worshipper. We are not initiated not because

the case of this Bhavishyapuran itself; because it
contains some inaccuracies and even absurdities - and
is Plutarch free from them? Are we to reject the perso-
nality of Alexander himself because of the supernatural
touches given to the story of his birth ? Would it be
reasonable to doubt, say the following verse ?

[The son of Chandragupta with' leanings towards Budd-
hism then married the yavani daughter of Sulava,
Governor of Purus]

In fact we owe a debt of gratitude to these Puranas
and Epics for having preserved all ancient and venerable
records of our people through revolutions which had
effaced the very traces of whole nations and whole
civilizations elsewhere in the word. For after all, these
records of our ancient and partriotic Puranas and His-
toris (Itihasas) are at any rate more faithful, more
accurate and more reliable than the modern up-to-
date western puranas that have such convincing discove-
ries to their credit as the one which assures us that
Ramayan sings of the foundation of Vijayanagar or the
other which asserts that Gautam the Buddha was
merely the Sun or the Dawn personified !

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 37

the Sangha is not worthy of us, but because we are not
worthy of stepping on the footsteps of the Temple
that has lasted longer because it rested on ideas than
many a great palace that rested on rocks. The
consciousness that the first great and the most
successful attempt to wean man from the brute inherent
in him was conceived, launched and carried on from
century to century by a galaxy of great teachers, Arhats
and Bhikkus who were born in India, who were bred
in India and who owned India as the land of their
worship, fills us with feelings too deep for words. And
if these be our feelings for the Sangha then what shall
we say about its great Founder, the Buddha, the
Enlightened ? I, the humblest of the humble of man-
kind can dare to approach Thee, O Tathagat, with
no other offering but my utter humility and my utter
emptiness! Although I feel that I fail to catch the
purport of thy words yet I know that it must be so.
Because while thy words are gathered from the lips of
Gods, mine ears and my understanding are trained to
the accents and the din of this matter-of-fact world.
Perhaps it was too soon for thee to sound thy march
and unfurl thy banner while the world was too young
and the day but just risen! It fails to keep pace with
thee and its sight gets dazzled and dimmed to keep the
radiance of the banner in full view. As long as the
law of evolution that lays down the iron command

— ' ^T^TTiR^T TOOT ^f^m^fe*T: I

38 HINDUTVA

[ Immobile forces are the easy prey of the mobile ones
those with no teeth fall a prey to those with deadly
fangs; those without hands succumb to those with hands,
and the cowards to the brave. ]

is too persistent and dangerously imminent to be
catagorically denied by the law of righteousness whose
mottos shine brilliantly and beautifully, but as the
stars in the heavens do, so long the banner of nationali-
ty will refuse to be replaced by that of Universality
and yet, that very national banner hallowed as it is by
the worship of gods and goddesses of our race, would
have been the poorer if it could not have counted the
Shakyasinha under its fold. But as it is, thou art ours as
truly as Shri Ram or Shri Krishna or Shri Mahavir had
been and as the words were but the echoes of yearnings
of our national soul, thy visions, the dreams of our
race, even so, if ever the law of Righteousness rules
triumphant on this our human plane, then thou wilt
find that the land that cradled thee, and the people that
nursed thee, will have contributed most to bring about
that consummation if indeed the fact of having contribu-
ted thee has not proved that much already ! !

Hindus : all one and a nation

So far we have depended upon Sanskrit records in
tracing the growth of the word Sindhu and we have
left the thread of our inquiry at the point where
the growing concept of an Indian nation was found to
be better expressed by the word Sindhusthan than by
any other existing words. It was precisely to refute any

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 39

parochial and narrow-minded significance which might,
as in the case of Aryawarta be attached to this word
that the definition of the word Sindhusthan was rid of
any association with a particular institution or party-
coloured suggestion. For example, Aryawarta was
according to an authority —

-\

[ The land where the system of four Varnas does not
exist should be known as the Mlechcha country :
Aryawarta lies away from it. ]

This solution, though legitimate could not be lasting.
An institution is meant for the society, not the society
or its ideal for an institution. The system of four
varnas may disappear when it has served its end or
ceases to serve it, but will that make our land a
Mlechchadesha — a land of foreigners ? The Sanyasis5i
the Aryasamajis, the Sikhqs and many others do not
recognize the system of the four castes and yet are they
foreigners ? God forbid ! They are ours by blood, by
race, by country, by God. ' Its name is Bharat and the
people are Bharati '52 is a definition ten times better
because truer than that. We, Hindus, are all one and
a nation, because chiefly of our common blood —
< Bharati Santati53 »

51 *f«mft, smtonsft, ftr<=r

52 ct *$ vref *rm *rrc<ft ^ tfafcf: 53 ?rrcft *Rrfa:

40 HINDUTVA

Hindusthani Language

At this period of our history -the rise as well as
the fall of Buddhism were accompanied by a remark-
able spread and growth of the vernaculars of India and
Sanskrit was fast being shut up in the impenetrable for-
tresses of classical conventionality to such an extent
that new ideas and new names had to be sanskritized
before they could be incorporated in any acceptable
work. Naturally the every day life and the ever chang-
ing phases of national and social activities gradually
sought expession through the spoken Prakrit which
thus grew better fitted to convey the living and throbb-
ing thoughts of the people in all their freshness and
vigour and precision. Consequently although the words
Sindhu and Sindhusthan are at times found in Sanskrit
works, yet the Sanskrit writers generally preferred the
word Bharat as being more in consonance with the es-
tablished canons of elegance. While on the other hand
the vernaculars stuck almost exclusively to the more
popular and living name of our land Hindusthan
(Sindhusthan), instead of the ancient and well-beloved
names Bharat or Aryawarta. We need not repeat here
how S in Sanskrit gets at times changed into H in India
as well as non-Indian Prakrits. So we find the living
vernacular literature of India full of reference to Hindu-
sthan or Hindus. Although the Sanskrit language must
ever remain the cherished and sacred possession of our
race, contributing most powerfully to the fundamental
unity of our people and enriching our life, ennobling
our aspirations and purifying the fountains of our being,

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 41

yet the honour of being the living spoken national
tongue of our people is already won by that Prakrit,
which being one of the eldest daughters of Sanskrit is
most fittingly called Hindi or Hindusthani the language
of the national and cultural descendants of the ancient
Sindhus or Hindus. Hindusthani is par excellence the
language of Hindusthan or Sindhusthan. The attempt
to raise Hindi to the pedestal of our national tongue is
neither new nor forced. Centuries before the advent of
British rule in India we find it recorded in our annals
that this was the medium of expression throughout India.
A sadhu or a merchant starting from Rameshwaram
and proceeding to Hard war, could make himself under-
stood in all parts of India through this tongue. Sanskrit
might have introduced him to circles of pandits and pri-
nces; but Hindusthani was a safe and sure passport to
the Rajasabhas as well as to the bazaars- A Nanak, a
Chaitanya, a Ramdas could and did travel up and down
the country as freely as they would have done in their
own provinces teaching and preaching in this tongue.
As the growth and development of this our genuine
national tongue was parallel to and almost simultane-
ous with the revival and popularization of the ancient
names Sindhusthan or Sindhus or Hindusthan or Hindus
it was but a matter of course that language being the
common possession of the whole nation should be call-
ed Hindusthani or Hindi.

After the expulsion of the Huns and the Shakasthe
valour of her arms left Sindhusthan in an undisturbed
possession of independence for centuries on centuries
to come and enabled her once more to be the land

42 HINDUTVA

where peace and plenty reigned. The blessings of free-
dom and independence were shared by the princes and
peasants alike. The patriotic authors go in rapture over
the greatness and the happiness that marked This long
chapter of our history extending over nearly a thousand
years or so.

tftfr inJr ferefr ^r: ^ ^r faraft *ra: \

( Every village has its temple ; in all districts are
sacrifices performed; every family has plenty of wealth;
and people are devoted to religion )

From Ceylon to Kashmir the Rajputs— -a single
family of princes — ruled, often connected closely by
marriages and more closely by the tradition of chivalry
and culture handed down by a common law. The whole
life of the nation was being brought into a harmony as
rich as divine, and the growth of the national language
was but an outward expression of this inward unity o
our national life.

Foreign Invaders

But as it often happens in history this very undis-
turbed enjoyment of peace and plenty lulled our
Sindhusthan, in a sense of false security and bred a
habit of living in the land of dreams. At last she was
rudely awakened on the day when Mohammad of Gazni
crossed the Indus, the frontier line of Sindhusthan and
invaded her. That day the conflict of life and death
began. Nothing makes Self conscious of it&ejf so much

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 43

as a conflict with non-self. Nothing can weld peoples
into a nation and nations into a state as the pressure
of a common foe. Hatred separates as well as unites.
Never had Sindhusthan a better chance and a more
powerful stimulus to be herself forged into an indivisi-
ble whole as on that dire day, when the great incono-
clast crossed the Indus. The Mohammedans had crossed
that stream even under Kasim, but it was a wound
only skin-deep, for the heart of our people was not
hurt and was not even aimed at. The contest began in
grim earnestness with Mohammad and ended, shall we
say, with Abdalli ? From year to year, decade to decade,
century to century, the contest continued. Arabia ceased
to be what Arabia was; Iran annihilated; Egypt, Syria,
Afghanistan, Baluchistan, Tartary, — from Granada to
Gazni — nations and civilizations fell in heaps before
the sword of Islam of Peace ! ! But here for the first
time the sword succeeded in striking but not in killing.
It grew blunter each time it struck, each time it cut
deep but as it was lifted up to strike again the wound
stood healed. Vitality of the victim proved stronger
than the vitality of the victor. The contrast was not
only grim but it was monstrously unequal. It was not
a race, a nation or a people India had to struggle with.
It was nearly all Asia, quickly to be followed by nearly
all Europe. The Arabs had entered Sindh and single-
handed they could do little else, They soon failed to
defend their own independence in their homeland and
as a people we hear nothing further about them. But
here India alone had to face Arabs, Persians, Pathans,
Baluchis, Tartars, Turks, Moguls — a veritable human

44 HINDUTVA

Sahara whirling and columning up bodily in a furious
world storm ! Religion is a mighty motive force. So is
rapine. But where religion is goaded on by rapine
and rapine serves as a handmaid to religion, the pro-
pelling force that is generated by these together is only
equalled by the profoundly of human misery and
devastation they leave behind them in their march.
Heaven and hell making a common cause - such were
the forces, overwhelmingly furious, that took India by
surprise the day Mohammad crossed the Indus and
invaded her. Day after day, decade after decade,
century aftar century, the ghastly conflict continued
and India single-handed kept up the fight morally and
militarily. The moral victory was won when Akbar came
to the throne and Darashukoh was born. The frantic
efforts of Aurangzeb to retrieve their fortunes lost in the
moral field only hastened the loss of the military
fortunes on the battlefield as well. At last Bhau, as if
symbolically, hammered the ceiling of the Imperial Seat
of the Moghals to pieces. The day of Panipat rose, the
Hindus lost the battle, but won the war. Never again
had an Afgan dared to penetrate to Delhi. While the
triumphant Hindu banner that our Marathas had
carried to Attock was taken up by our Sikhs and
carried across the Indus to the banks of the Kabul.

Hindutva at work

In this prolonged furious conflict our people be-
came intensely conscious of ourselves as Hindus and
were welded into a nation to an extent unknown in our

ESSENTIALS OF H1NDUTVA 45

history. It must not be forgotten that we have all along
referred to the progress of the Hindu movement as a
whole and not to that of any particular creed or religi-
ous section thereof— of Hindu tva54 and not Hinduism
only. Sanatanists, Satnamis, Sikhs, Aryas, Anaryas,
Marathas and Madrasis, Brahmins and Panchamas — all
suffered as Hindus and triumphed as Hindus. Both
friends and foes contributed equally to enable the words
Hindu and Hindusthan to supersede all other designa-
tions of our land and our people. Aryavarta and
Daxinapatha, Jambudweep and Bharatvarsha55 none
could give so eloquent an expression to the main
political and cultural point at issue as the word, Hindu-
sthan could do. All those on this side of the Indus who
claimed the land from Sindhu to Sindhu, from the Indus
to the seas, as the land of their birth, felt that they were
directly mentioned by that one single expression, Hindu-
sthan. The enemies hated us as Hindus and the whole
family of peoples and races, of sects and creeds that
flourished from Attock to Cuttack was suddenly indivi-
dualised into a single Being. We cannot help dropping
the remark that no one has up to this time taken the
whole field of Hindu activities from A. D. 1300 to 1800
into survey from this point of view, mastering the
details of the various now parallel, now correlated
movements from Kashmir to Ceylon and from Sindh
to Bengal and yet rising higher above them all to visu-
alise the whole scene in its proportion as an integral
whole. For it was the one great issue to defend the

54 %c3" 55 3rr*r?^ ? sf$T*rm, ^cfcftq", iTF^rq-

46 HINDUTVA

honour and independence of Hindusthan and maintain
the cultuial unity and civic life of Hindutva and not
Hinduism alone, but Hindutva. -i. e. Hindudharma
that was being fought out on the hundred fields of
battle as well as on the floor of the chambers of diplo-
macy. This one word, Hindutva, ran like a vital spinal
cord through our whole body politic and made the
Nayars of Malabar weep over the sufferings of the
Brahmins of Kashmir. Our bards bewailed the fall of
Hindus, our seers roused the feelings of Hindus, our
heroes fought the battles of Hindus, our saints blessed
the efforts of Hindus, our statesmen moulded the fate
of Hindus, our mothers wept over the wounds and
gloried over the triumphs of Hindus.

It would require a volume if we were to sub-
stantiate these remarks by quoting all the words and
writings of our forefathers that bear on the point. But
the argument in hand does not allow us to be drawn
aside even by so alluring a task as that. Consequently
we must content ourselves with quoting a few
eloquent lines either from the lips or the pen of some
of the foremost representatives of our Hindu race.

Of all the works written in the Hindi language,
old and new, the great epic Prithviraj Raso56 by
Chand Bardai is, so far as present researches go,
admittedly the most ancient and authoritative one.
There is only one solitary verse which claims to be an
earlier composition. But luckily and strangely enough

56 ^^TMtmt

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 47

this very first composition in our northern vernacular
literature refers to the word Hindusthan, in terms full
of pride and patriotic fervour. The poet, Ven, father of
Chand Baradai addresses the Raja of Ajmer, the father
of Prithviraj —

3T?<s *v arsrin:, arcs? f^ stcsth

Chand Baradai who may justly be called the first
poet of Hindi literature, uses the words Hindi,Hindawan,
Hind so often and so naturally as to leave no doubt
of their being quite common and accepted terms as far
back as the eleventh century, when the Mohammedans
had not secured any permanent footing even in
Punjab and therefore could not have influenced the
independent and proud Rajputs to adopt a degrading
nickname invented by their foes and make it their
national and proud appellation. Describing how
Shahabuddin taken prisoner by the Hindus, was let go
by the noble Prithviraj on condition that he would not
again attack the 'Hindus'. Chand says—

1 vfe <r^rfer <ttP|[ arc* <snzx *rf fasft
g*r i^t msft 5^r ^ v?% ftsft
fan* ^rc fa^tflx srrf w$ *gw*%
*rfcr f^rr srif? ^rf^^r arrsft ^*th^ '

48 HINDUTVA

But Shahabuddin was not a man to be won over
by Hindu chivalry. Again and again he sallies forth
and a fierce fight ensues to the boundless joy of that
divine cynic Narada : —

and again ' ^^ % *ft? sr| *sP*T <TTC
till at last % ^^ 3T«TTf ^T

But in spite of his efforts to crush the Hindus
Shahabuddin lost the day and the triumphant news sent
Delhi mad with joy that Pajjunrai had once more
taken Shahabuddin a prisoner. The populace greeted
their king Prithviraj : —

1 3TT3T TTT*T ^f 3TR ^TT I

Further pledges solemnly entered by the man who
had broken his former pledges as solemnly given,
succeeded in securing the release of the Shah once more
and once more, but now for the last time, did he invade
Hindusthan and by a fell swoop was almost at the gate
of Delhi. The council of war is summoned by the
Hindapati Prithviraj, insolent challenge is sent by
Shahabuddin, the Rawals and Samantas are aflame,

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 49

when Chamundrai tells the Mohammedan messenger to
remind Shah of the dust he had licked and adds : —

The fatal day drew near and both the sides knew
it was a desparate game. Chandbaradai almost on the
eve of the defection of Hameer, approaches the
Goddess Durga and opens his prayer so pathetic
and so patriotic thus —

After having narrated the fateful results of the
battle and the consequent plot that enabled Shahabuddin
to strike Prithviraj dead, the poem ends with paying
a last touching tribute to the fallen Hindu Emperor —

It is remarkable that although the word Bharat ap-
pears often in the Raso in the sense of Mahabharat, yet
it seldom if ever, is used in the sense of Bharatvarsha.
What we find in this earliest of our northern vernacular
composition holds good in the latter development of
our vernacular literature down to the day of the great
Hindu revival and the war of Hindu liberation. Ramadas,
the high priest and prophet of that movement,

50 HINDUTVA

in one of his mystical and prophetic utterances sings
of the vision he has seen and triumphantly but
thankfully asserts that much of what he has seen in his
vision has already come to be true —

3^1% *TCgV TFTt, f^|*?TH TOT^

snr^rrsrT wft snsr, srr^w^ff ir

^W8r ^*r fief, ^T^^r <tt%?t ?rc
3? wf ^ ^r ^, an^^T^^ff ll %

Bhushana, the Hindu poet who was one of the
most prominent of our national bards that went up and
down the country and roused 'Hindawan' to action
and achievement in those days of the war of Hindu
liberation, challenged Aurangzeb —

* In utter darkness I dreamt: behold, the dreams
are realised. Hindusthan is up, has come by her own,

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 51

wm ^rr *rs*fte* ^ft ^gt g*r wf *ts cfft ferret u
Again at another place Bhooshan says : —

TOSH? STHTft ft?5ft % <Tm*TT|[ fester

and those that hated her and sinned against God are put
down with a strong hand ! Verily it is a holy land and
happy! For, God has made her cause his own and
Aurangzeb is down ! The dethroned are enthroned and
the enthroned is dethroned. Actions speak better than
words ! Verily Hindusthan is a holy land and happy :
Now that Dharma is backed up by Rajadharma, Right
by might, the waters of Hind, no longer defiled, can
enable us once more to perform our ablutions and
austerities. Let come what may : Rama has made this
land holy and happy !

1. 'Thou art so busy in winning easy victories
over the poor Hindu friars and beggars there. Why
dust thou fight so shy to face the Hindpati himself ?
Thou hast lost fort after fort in the fair field here : that
is perhaps why thou art distinguishing thyself by
pulling down unoffending convents, churches and
chapels there ! Art thou not ashamed to call thyself
Alamgir, conqueror of the world, when thyself standest
vanquished by the Hindu Emperor Shivaji ?

52 H1NDUTVA

*rfk iPt fa^ % *h ^t ^s^ fa? *r*ft

*M ?rfa ^ f^r ^teT"% ^rar ^ft^r

*$M *rfar *f<rfa ^r^crr% 5 sttt^ ^t n ;
Speaking of things that Shivaji achieved Bhooshan
says: —

wfa aftT 5TT^T TT^fT ^ feF*T gf?T *t

*rair ^t*t TT^ft TT^fr *pjt *rnffif
^t^fe «^Rt w 5jF?r t"

It was in this light that the achievements of Shivaji
and his compatriots were viewed by his race through-
out Hindusthan. Bhushan though not a Maratha felt
as proud of the victorious march of the Maratha
warriors from Shivaji to Bajirao (Vide Bhushan
Granthavali) as they themselves did. He was Hindu of
Hindus and till the last day of his life he kept on
singing his stirring songs, emphasizing the national and

2. sratoft 3. tot % TCFfaft 4. bri^r

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 53

pan-Hindu aspect of the movement and impressing it
on the minds of its great leaders. Amongst these
Chhatrasal, the brave Bundela king, was his second
favourite: —

'f^T* ?T£^ STfa, fee 3 *R£* SWfe «Tf

Nor was this tribute paid to Chhatrasal un-
deservedly. Chhatrasal was truly like Shivaji, Rajsinha,
Guru Govindsinha, the 'Dhala Hindavaneki.* He
Looked upon himself as the champion of 'Hindutva\
Says Chhatrasal :-

' flS <r^ ^ £ ^ 'i fe*w\ %x srer ^fe 3tr 11
^Fft *jt arg^ qft ^*t 1 %gfic ^for srar^ft #sft it

^r?fe^ tffcraOr httt# 1 ^ ^nr^ fr^ s^pt n
*r*r t^t^cT tfk f ^ ^rr# 1 5j^ ^: facr .fey spit 1 1

3TTS TRTSTgY ^ 5ft^-| g«rfa" 3tfa" sfe W 3ftt 11 ''

After his historical visit paid by Chhatrasal to
Shivaji the great Bundela leader, greatly encouraged by
the latter

met Sujansinha who was a powerful Rajput chief in
Bundelkhand. In the conversation that followed Sujan

1. srer 2. ^2^ 3. TT^rarc 4. *hr.

54 HINDUTVA

sinha draws a moving picture of the political situation
of the country —

^TcTHT? 3>rf 5TCT, ffgsW ^>mj

5r«r # =sfq% ^^ft wpflr, crat <r^ft fta" f^rpflr,

W sfT c£T ^fe ^tfV S^THt, eft PfiT ^1 ffgl^ <THt

Sujansinha, the old Raja, saying thus offered his
sword and heart to Chhatrasal and blessed him and
his mission —

star ^r«r *rr*m w i %& n$t ^t^t 3Tfa<5T#

Tegbahadur, the Great Guru, who not only cham-
pioned the cause of this war of Hindu liberation in
Punjab but laid down his life for it, is reported to have
advised the Brahmins of Kashmir, who oppressed
and threatened with '[slam or death' solicited his
help — -

3*t *£fr fe^g fe*r 5%5 are 3 %*m\*ft

1. ^sr^RT the historical works that describe the
events of ^TOT^' s reign, was composed under his
direct orders by ^T^fe.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 55

fircr <it# ?r*r gt far ^^ ^ I <T^ *rc^

And when he was challenged by the foes of the
race and religion he boldly answered : —

fen % 5?r ssft ^m^r^ 1 stf Pt^t^t fet sr^T^T
ajxTT ?rreft «nf ?*r % 1 3Tfcr fsnwt faro* fa^g' 3 '

His illustrious son. Guru Govindsinba, at once the
poet, prophet and warrior of our Hindu race and our
Hindu culture, exclaims in a moment of inspiration —

'*rara ^mcT^r ^rrasT <t*t tt^

^ «PT % ST^ VT¥ ?rw n''

( ferf^ ^rc^ by <ts tflfasfir^ )

2, Oh Brahmins ! Listen, You go and tell the
Turks ( Mohammedans ) without fear • there is a great
Hindu leader of ours with lacs of followers. His name
is Teg Bahadur, Uplifter and awakener of mankind,
First make him embrace Islam and then we will all do
the same.'

3. ' Hearing them, Guru Teg Bahadur, the hero,
the champion of srf, made re P l Y ' How can I dis-
grace the Hindu Dharma, so dear to my heart. '

1 . ' May this Khalsa Panth flourish every where
(so that) long may Hindu Dharma live and all
falsehood vanish ' ! !

56 HINDUTVA

The chronicler of Shivaji in the old work
' ferra^Rfi^f ^ft^r ' says < fasrreft^ *Rfa an$, # srrq^
% , ^ sf$r*r ^ swTFff ttstto %^t. ^^T^r qter %rfh

But the shrewd and trusted Dadaji advised :-—

3Wt^r STTSftefe 3RT3T ST^TT *JWt STScfW

And' yet Dadaji was the guiding hand of the whole
movement. The youthful Shivaji writes in 1646 A. D.

2. Shivaji thought to himself - We are Hindus.
The Mohammedans have subjugated the entire Deccan.
They have defiled our sacred places ! In fact they have
desecrated our religion. We will, therefore, protect our
religion and for that we would even lose our lives. We
will acquire new kingdoms by our power and that
bread we will eat. '

3. 'Your plans are certainly very good; but it
would be exceedingly difficult to carry them to a finish.
In the first place you are to establish powerful
centres. Hindu kings and Hindu armies must afford
assistance from place to place. Again God Almighty
must be on our side and we must be blessed with the
benediction of consummate saints. And then these
things are possible.'

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 57

to one Qfliis young compatriots- 'st^rt* 5^ 3fW&
<HKfrft *;tft *i%t. aufe f &*& ^sppt. ^tff an*e[tff ^r

f^ ? 3? <r> irr«t f^fV ^Trs^T ^r^t 5Tfe*rrc an|. |
TT33T ^iW I «ff% ^R?rtcr qsiT 3tt|.'

Mr. Rajvade has tJie original copy of this letter
which reveals, as it were, the soul of the great Hindu
movement in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It was no parochial movement — it was Hindavi Swarajya
the Hindu Empire — that was the great ideal which had
fired the imagination and goaded the actions of Shivaji
while he was but in his teens. We have his own word
for it.

But when Jaysingh — a Rajput prince — came to
subdue Shivaji and his movement, the c6gt of Shivaji* s
power of resistance became very naturally blunted. It
was disheartening in the extreme to find the Rajputs —
the ancient shieLd of Hindutva — shedding their blood
and the blood of their co-religionists and brother
Hindus that the Mohammedans might win ! Says Shivaji
to Jaysingh —

1. ' You would not be faithless to the emperor.
Our primordial family God is self-existing ( and there-
fore all-powerful ). He has given success to our efforts
so long and in future also will fulfil the object of my
life by bringing about the establishment of f^^t ^cpr^r
(Hindu independence). Indeed it is the cherished wish
of God that such a kingdom should be established. '

58 HINDUTVA

TJS^f ffS^f. ffg^TOFFTgS *ft sW STcTSTT W^fta. TO %

Jaysingh was doubtless touched and replied-
'sftTTOT 3 ^r^TTf <pffafa. ^T^T^ft <J^V ^?^T ^TT^f.

snrj^r tr. 3^ f^r. 5^ %w **rm ^t^t m^r^r
3*irrcr srT^t sr^Tf^ srr^f. '

The rise of Hindu power under Shivaji had electri-
fied the Hindu mind all over India. The oppressed
looked upon him as an Avatar and a Saviour. Thus we

2. 'lam ready to hand over to you all fortresses
you might ask for. I myself will plant your flag on
them. But let not those Mohammedans triumph. I am a
Hindu; you are a Rajput and therefore a Hindu. The
kingdom has originally been of the Hindus. I will
humble my head a hundred times before one who pro-
tects the Hindu Religion. But I will never agree to do
anything that is calculated to impair the honour of the
Hindu religion.'

3. ' Emperor Aurangzeb is a very powerful sove-
reign. You should therefore agree to make terms with
him. You will not be able to live in peace by maintain-
ing hostile relations with him. We Princes of Jaipur,
are Hindus; you are also a Hindu. We are in accord with
you since you are out to rehabilitate Hindu religion. '

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 59

find that the people of the Savnoor district groaning
under the Mohammedan yoke appeal to him : —

'*ffa*rife fasr ^f ; arn^ ^tt% ^raraT^I: ^mrcrrcr ^fera^f.

3 f fft %^T^ tf^UT^. *?5^t% 5TRFF. ^^T^T ^+2
3TT^t. g^T^f sn^flf STT^ff t^t 3TT5T% 5TTT ^^ ^S^ft

Again after Sbivaji had restored the Jagir to his
brother Vyankoji at Tanjore on condition that he
should cease to recognize the sovereignty of the
Mohammedan sway. Shivaji writes : —

Rajaram in order to express his sense of apprecia-
tion of the national services of Santaji and his brothers

1- 'This Yusuf is a very wicked fellow. He op-
presses the women and the children, commits atrocities
and even resorts to such reprehensible misdeeds as the
slaughter of cows. We are so disgusted that we can no
longer live under him. You are the restorer of the
Hindu religion and the destroyer of the Mlechhas
( foreigners ). It is therefore that we have come to you
for refuge. And since we have so approached, guards
have been stationed at our gates. In fact they are intent
on starving us here without food and water. So do
come with all haste, ( lit. by turning nights into davs ).

2. * Those who are bitter haters of Hindus should
have no footing in your territory. '

60 HINDUTVA

in the war of independence, conferred on Bahiroji the
high and proud appellation 'Hindurav'. When the siege
at Jinji was pressing the Maratha forces to try their
best to break through it an attempt was made to win
over the Marathas in the services of the Moghal
commander: —

1 ^TFTtsft s TF# 3t^t *f *TH %^. 5^ anT^t tpp

*ft€ ^5^T ^T^TcT \ooo qft^pRff ^ fe^ I *rWt%

ig$ffz&\as ^1%, 'ejT^f ftprjspm %^ ?r^Nr srm^fr cft^r jw

1. ' Secret negotiations were opened with Nagoji
Raje to the effect that if he joined with the Marathas
they would break the enemy's forces and preserve the
Hindu religion. He should therefore, come over to
them ' Thereupon Nagoji Raje gave up service under
the Mohammedans and withdrawing the attack entered
the city with his battalion numbering five thousand

when Shirke entered the service of the Moghuls

(as Sambhaji had beheaded the Shirke family). Khan-
doji Ballal said, * Shirkes had been beheaded : but
similarly three of my ancestors were killed by being
trampled under the foot of an elephant. But we are
striving for the establishment of the kingdom of the
Hindus and you must be our partners-' Then, Shirke
also entered the plot and helped the Marathas with the
result that Rajaram broke through the siege and
escaped.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 61

5T *ra5mS fao^T frrsftf^ TTSTrcm ^TSett %^TS cftf*

gz* Oft. '

Shahu had once entered into a controversy with
Jayasinha (Sawai) on the point * What have I done and
what you have done to protect the Hindu Religion ! *

The same spirit animated the generations of Baji-
rao and Nanasaheb/ Says the historian: —

%^^r feRft. sr^fe ^rnft, *ftPre ^fem* ?nfc ^nn qm

STTcff apffc ^FT ?'* (5FT5fhT5T)

1 . It appears that others also followed or supple-
mented Bajirao in the great work undertaken by him

The above idea of Hindupadpadshahi (Hindu

Sovereignty) was animating the hearts of such saints as
Brahmendra Swami, Govind Dixit and others who had
been going over the country on pilgrimages and acquir-
ing experience. They were imparting instructions to
their disciples with the same idea. Bajirao himself says.
'Why do you tarry ? Rush vigorously and attack ; and
Hindupadpadshahi (Hindu Kingdom) is at hand ! '

(Baijrao)

62 HINDUTVA

Brahmendra Swami was the central figure of the
intellectua Is of the period. 'TCJ f^l^m zr*%Z sqT
TT^t^r ^tcft cirf^r re^r ^nfte zftTir crra& *n$ %pTT

^t *T>£ c^TT^t SIT^T *RtcT TRf^T feft.^

( *n£errf )
Mathurabai writes to this Swami : —
' sfsRTsft jftF^ar, *r<TtsfY ftr^, ^"tat m^^r, Tmisft

The letters sent by this brave lady, Mathurabai
Angre, are all so full of patriotic fervour and force
that they deserve a perusal by all those who want to
catch the real spirit of the great Hindu revival.

2. But the Swami did not think it proper to meet
one in whose territory Hindu Religion was being

defiled ! He impressed upon Shahu *s mind how

disgraceful it was that Deities and Brahmins should be
subjected to atrocities in the territory of Hindus ! *

( Sardesai )

3, Shankaraji Mohite, Ganoji Shinde, Khandoji
Nalkar, Ramaji Kharade, Krishanaji Mod and other
powerful sardars have preserved the kingdom, extermi-
nated the Mohammedans and protected the Hindu reli-
gion in Konkan.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 63

The Portuguese fanaticism at Goa was an Indian
edition of the Inquisition in Europe. Once they pro-
hibited the open observation of all Hindu religious
rites and rituals. Then the public-spirited Antaji
Raghunath defied the order and encouraged other
Hindus to do the same. But he knew perfectly well that
impotent passive resistance is impotent suffering. To
be successful under such conditions as then prevailed it
must be backed up by the sword of a Bajirao or a
Chimnaji. It was Antaji Raghunath who brought about
the revolution in the Portuguese territories in India,
enlisted the sympathies of all Hindu leaders on the side
of Bajirao and in fact was the prime mover who
brought about the Maratha invasion which ended in the
liberation of almost all the Hindu territories after the
triumphant compaign of Chimnaji Appa.

But in the meanwhile and before the fall of Bassein
(Vasai) Nadirshah invaded India and Delhi fell in
his hands. The Maratha agents of Bajirao write to
him : —

' afFn*q$^raT?r ^t ^r *u%t aft <T«ft ^t^ ^Tste.
arsrcssareflf %&® ^fte. *^pt mcRrc ^Preff «rrif. smfi

3TPTT ^* *fteT ?TR SWfaaT qif^. qifTOTTfT iTTmTT

^rr^r ?rr?V. f^TT^refr fa%* Trari% (^Taft sraftnr)

*f$t Ti*nwte ^rearer stc^tW arft an|. Ttg^ sreraft snfe-
sr^r *2ntfr% ^rfhft *n*facfterr ^rra; ^rfft^r jfesr^

64 HINDUTVA

fKTH" *nz ^ <rffer feffaft vtzzr qzn^dft snq-ur

(Dhondo Govind's letters to Bajirao)

But as Vasai was still holding out Bajirao could
not go in time. He was chafing under his inabilites. He
writes : —

1 f^t^RT Mtt «ftT sttrt ?rr^ 3tt|. argrre tosRt srreft
qrff. atsro <TTT*r *rasV <?ftar ar^ fftspr s qir«ft<TK s^f ?*mr

( ^Tf^Tm ) Sf^Pt $3f %3f Sfq- 3T*TT fa^R 3TT|. *

1. Tahmaspkulikhan (Nadirshah) is not a divine
being so as to be able to destroy the whole creation.
He is bound to come to terms with those that prove
strong. Therefore Your Excellency ( Bajirao ) should
come with a strong force. Peace can come only after a
war. We can expect a decisive result if Your Excellency
and the entire Rajput chiefs combine now. We must
join together all the Hindus including Bundele and
such others and we must present a more than brilliant
front. Nadirshah does not intend to go back. He will

directly march on the Hindu kingdoms Savai Jaysing

wants that Ranaji ( of Udepur ) should be installed on
the Imperial throne. The Hindu Kings including Savai
are looking for the arrival of Your Excellency. In fact
as soon as Your Excellency can give a strong backing
Savaiji will send forces against Delhi and will also
himself march.' ( Dhondo Govind's letters to Bajirao )

1. The Hindus are placed in a critical situation.
We have not yet captured Bassein Under the

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 65

But his indomitable spirit rose triumphant over
all obstacles; He writes again : —

' STT-q^ft W^\ m^ (T^ft^f ^ft^ ^\\ ) ^T^T

Tfq- TT^ 37 ^ifew^T ^*TT ^T^f ^cft eft ! ' *

(Bajirao's letter)

Sawai Jaysinha was as intensely proud of his
Hindutva as any one else of the great leaders of the
Hindu movement. It was he who directed the people
— the oppressed Hindus — in Malva to request Baji-
rao to extend the war of Hindu liberation to Malva
and thus to take a further important step towards the
realization of the mission of the generation of the follo-
wers of the Shivaji cult all over India — the mission of
Hindupadpadshahi. In one of his letters the enlightened
and patriotic Rajput prince writes : —

circumstances all the Maratha armies should combine
and cross the river Chambal. The plan is that he
(Nadirshah) should not be allowed to proceed further.
( Bajirao to Brahmendra Swami)

2. We must lay aside our internal differences
(such as punishment of Raghoji and others). The
whole of Hindusthan has now one common enemy to
encounter. As for myself I have decided to cross the
Narbada and spread the Maratha armies as far as
Chambal and we shall see how Nadirshah proceeds
southward. ( Bajiro's letter).

66 HINDUTVA

^nsft *ft arm?* fe^ | ft? «rrc^i% ^5T3ft ^r |, eft

Again he writes : — i ^\\ 3TT3TO | STTT *T3" *n«y%

^ ^fe |t?rr farcr srr<r fa^rc ^tt *rr^*f *r TO^m^ff vt
Tt*te fat, sfk %w ^r^r^r t^t i '

(Jaysingh's letters 26-10-1721 A. D.)

Nanasaheb the son of Bajirao was in fact the

greatest leader of men that the great movement of

Hindu liberation and Hindupadpadshahi brought to

the front. His correspondence is a study by itself.

L May you get success and wealth! ...Respect-
ful greetings to Nandlalji Pradhan and Bhaiji Thakur,
Sansthan Indore, from Maharajadhiraj Jaising, camp
Amargad. You are informed that the Emperor has
started operations. But you need not be anxious. God
Almighty will bring the matters to a successful issue
We have secured from Bajirao Peshve solemn promises
concerning you.

Oh splendid I Really creditable. It is meet and
proper that you &nd the other chiefs of Malva unite
and bring about the prosperity and grbwth of the
Hindu religion. It was with this object that the
Musalmans were descouraged from Malva and the
Hindu religion was preserved intact.

ESSENTIALS OF HlNDUTVA 67

Wherever we find him, we find him %he e%ampion of
Hindutva. To Tarabai he writes : — ' jftiM %^T^ ff^-

qWTcT^T 3W ! ' 2 (Nanasaheb's letters)

Though much was lost on the field of Panipat,
yet all was not lost. For two men survived the battle
and saved the cause. Nana Farnavis and Mahadaji
Shinde — the brain, the sword, the shield of the Hindu
Power — thought and worked and fought for 40 years
or so — in spite of the disastrous defeat at Panipat or
rather in virtue of it — for that defeat was the greatest
blow that the victors had ever received and
succeeded in making the Hindus the de facto Rulers
of Hindusthan. How conscious the national mind had
grown of the triumphant turn events had taken and
how inte jsely proud had they been of Hindutva and the
Hindu Empire all but established can best be seen in
the letters of the most talented diplomatic writers of
that period. Govindrao Kale writes to Nana Fadnavis
from the capital of the Nizam on learning the news
that gladdened the Marathas from end to end of Maha-
rashtra that the misunderstanding growing between
the two men Nana and Mahadaji had disappeared : —

2. The Moghul (Nizam) is an inveterate enemy of
the Hindu power, and yet, while yoti are yourself
carrying on negotiations with them you accuse (me)
your humble servant of crooked ways !

(Nanasaheb's letters)

68 HINDUTVA

f^^ciTT <nff fatfY fofr ? *«r% w«r *Rra sn^. src^ ^%

^<=?TT?ft (cTR^qT 3f5F3rpfif) ffeRTJT^f TT^T ^fcr$. 3T^
3n^*rf*TTT% ^TCfMfa JTrft^ftcTRr *TTt cft^T ?FR ^SflTT ^^T

RF fepfffcT ^T^TT^t ftRT*fr t^RT^T ^TO* 3"

wtrafr f^rrl*. c*tr? frfaq; ^>*tr ***ksr*r %S. 3!
*f, arifr ^«ff stt& m$. %&& *fofcrt% ynrsr^^fr sr
*rcm 3tt^. qtg m& «rcf ? sttrt stt^ ^t^Mr $***rtt ?tzb\.

1. When I read your letter I was simply thrilled
with joy. Indeed I felt mightily happy. I cannot express
all that fully in a letter. Literally my mind was flooded
with thoughts. All the territory from the river Attock to
the Indian Ocean is the land of Hindus and not of the
Turks. These have been our frontiers from the times of
Pandavas down to those of Vikramaditya. They pre-
served and enjoyed it. After them the rulers turned out
to be quite effete and the Yavanas (Mohammedans)
rose in power. The Moghuls seized the Kingdom of
Hastinapur. And eventually during the regime of
Alamgir we were reduced to such straits that the wearer

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 69

^ft^^T^V. 3rri% f^fjr wnsa^ mtft ararat 3^tr *t
^■rt | ^rar 3rr|. 3T^^r *fret ^sctt. iptcNtt *rkt ^

&fo?T ^THT ^t^ft ffEgpmtcT fa^T ^*J*ft cqt^T

sf^t^cT ^F^rfsprrfir 5^ 3<nfftr «mW g^r an|. *fts
3^t| cf 3^r qi^ 3TTfar aprar \*z ?nw was, sttctt ifiret

^■F3r^r ? cr^rr *T>zt 3tt|cT. | fawr ^Ehrratfr ^^ shwt «t

3nt^. 4?r fr3^f. amor fef^zrm^r tt^t *mw stt$

(*.*r.tv»^).

of every Yandyopavita (the sacred thread) was required
to pay a jijeya tax of Rs. 3-8 and to buy cooked food.

At such a juncture was born Shivaji Maharaj, the
founder of the era and the protector of the religion.
However his mission was confined to a limited area.
Then came Nanasaheb and Bhausaheb of respected
memory. Heroes of such pre-eminent prowess that the
like of them have not been born. And now everything
has been restored to us under the benign and illustrious
auspices of Shrimant (Peshve ) owing to the astuteness
and valour of Patil Boa. But how was all this achieved!
Because we had won we thought it had been an easy

70 HINDUTVA

This one single letter penned with such ease and
grace gives a truer expression to the spirit of our
history than many a dull volume had done. How
spontaneously it hits on the right derivation of the epi-
thets Hindu and Hindusthan and how completely our
ancestors down to the last generation loved and reve-
renced and identified themselves with these epithets is
so eloquently illustrated in this letter as to render it
superfluous to cite any more.

Stupid notions must go

Having thus tried to trace the successive chapters
of the history of the words Hindu and Hindusthan
from the earliest Vedic period to the fall of the last of
our Hindu empire in 1818 A. D., we are now in a posi-
tion to address ourselves to the main task of determin-
ing the essentials of Hindutva. The first result of our
enquiry is to explode the baseless suspicion which has

matter. If it had been the case of Mohamedans, volumes
of histories would have been written about it* Amongst
the Mohammedans even the smallest matter is extolled
by them to the skies. While amongst us Hindus we are
inclined not even to refer to our exploits however
magnificent they may be. Indeed results difficult to
achieve have been achieved. The Mohammedans think
and say that the accursed Hindus have established
their supremacy !

And really Patil Boa has broken the heads of those
who tried to raise them. In fact the unachievable has
been achieved. To establish order and reap its benefit

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 71

crept into the minds of some of our well-meaning but
hasty countrymen that the origin of the words Hindu
and Hindusthan is to be traced to the malice of the
Mohammedans ! After all that has been said in the pre-
vious paragraphs about the history of these words, this
suspicion seems so singularly stupid that to mention it
is to refute it. Long before Mohmmad was born, nay,
long before the Arabians were heard of as a people,
this ancient nation was known to ourselves as well as to
the foreign world by the proud epithet Sindhu or
Hindu and Arabians could not have invented this term,
any more than they could have invented the Indus itself.
They simply learnt it from the ancient Iranians, Jews,
and other peoples. But apart from all serious historical
refutation, is it not clear that had it been really a contem-
ptuous expression of our foes as it is said to be could
it have ever recommended itself to the bravest and best

like the great kings is still ahead. I am afraid our
merits will fail and the work will be spoiled. The
achievements are not limited to the acquisition of terri-
tory and regaining of our kingdom, but include the
preservation of Vedas and Shastras, rehabilitation of
religion, protection cows and Brahmins, establishment
of suzerainty and the diffusion of our fame and victory.
To keep all this intact depends on you and Patil
Boa. If there is difference amongst you the enemy
is bound to grow strong. Now my misgivings are at
rest. It was really splendid ! Very excellent ! The ene-
mies are besetting us on all sides. I was, very uneasy.
Your letter has been a relief to me ( 1793 A. D. ).

72 HINDUTVA

of our race ? Surely out people were not quite such
strangers either to the Arabic or Persian tongues! The
Mohammedans were apt to refer to us as Kafar also but
had our people adopted that name and stuck to it. as a
distinguishing mark ? Why did they submit voluntarily
to the national insult only in the case of the other
epithets Hindusthan and Hindu ? Simply because, they
knew more of our national traditions and were less cut
off from our national life than some of us had been.
That is why some of us keep constantly harping on the
fact that this word Hindu is not found in Sanskrit.
What of this word alone ? - The Sanskrit literature
makes no mention of Kishan-Banaras-Maratha-Sikh
Gujarat-Patna-Sia-Jamuna and a thousand other words
that we use daily. But are they to be traced to some
foreign source ? The word Banaras though not found
in Sanskrit is still ours because it is the Prakrit form
of Varanasi which is found in Sanskrit. In fact it is
ridiculous to expect a Prakrit word in classical
Sanskrit Nay more ; although Hindu being a Prakrit
form of a Sanskrit word, should not be expected to be
found in Sanskrit, yet as it is it cannot be but a
weighty proof of its importance even in its Prakrit
form that, that form should be at times met with in
Sanskrit literature : for example, the Bherutantra uses
this word, Hindu. Great Sanskrit lexicographers like
Apte in Maharashtra and Taranath Tarkavachaspati
in Bengal have also mentioned it. While the line
1 Shivashiva na Hindur na Yavanah5?' is too well
known to be quoted.

57 ftrei%3" *r ffpjif m^i \

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 73

It may be that in the modern Mohammedanized
Persian some contemptuous meaning has come to be
associated with the term Hindu but how does that
show that the original signification of Hindu was
contemptuous and meant 'black' ? The words Hindu
or Hind are used in Persian but they do not mean black
and yet we know that they along with Hindu are
originated from the same Sanskrit word Sindhu or
Sindh. If the word Hindu is applied to us because it
means ' black ' then is it that Hind and Hindi are also
applied to us though they do not mean 'a black man ' ?
The fact is that the word Hindu dates its origin not
from the Mohammedanized Persian but from the ancient
language of Iran, the Zend, and then the Saptasindhu
meant Saptasindhu alone- It could not have been applied
to us because we were black literally, for the simple
reason that the ancient Saptasindhu i. e. Hindus
in Avestic period were as fair as the Iranians and
lived practically side by side and even at times together
with them. Even so late as the dawn of the Christian
era the Parthians used to call our frontier province as
Shvetabharat or White India. Thus originally Hindu
simply could not have literally meant a. black man.

In fact, after it has been made so amply clear
in the foregoing sections that the epithets Hindu
and Hindusthan had been the proud and patriotic
designations signifying our land and our nation long
before the Mohammedans or Mohammedanized Persians
were heard of it becomes almost immaterial so far as
the greatness of epithet Hindu and its claim to our love
are concerned, what meaning, complimentary or contem-

74 HINDUTVA

ptuous, is attached to it by some swollen-headed
fanatic here and there. There was a time when the
term 'England' had fallen so low in England itself in
the estimation of her Norman conquerors that it
became a formula of swearing against each other !
' May I become an Englishman ! ' was the strongest
form of self-denunciation and calling a Norman ' an
Englishman ' an unpardonable insult. But did the
English care to change the name of their land or their
nation and call it Normandy instead of England ?
Or would their disowning their name * the English '
have made them great ? No ; on the contrary, precisely
because they did not disown their ancient blood or
name, to-day we find that while the word Norman has
become an historical fossil and Normandy has no place
on the map of the world, the contemptuous English
and their English language have come to own the
largest empire the world has yet seen ! And yet great
as the glories of the English world are, what on the
whole, has it to show to match the glories of the
Hindu world?

In times of conflict nations do lose their balance
of mind and if the Persians or others once understood
by the word Hindu a thief or a black man alone then
let them remember that the word Mohammedan too
was not always mentioned to denote any very enviable
type of mankind by the Hindus either. To call a mana
Musalman or better still a ' Musanda ' was worse than
calling him a brute. Such bitter fulminations and
mutual recriminations though they might have the
excuse of inevitability in times of life and death

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 75

struggles while the fume and flame of the angry brutal
passions last, should be forgotten as soon as men
recover from their fits and claim to be recognized as
gentlemen. Nor should we forget that the ancient Jews
used the term Hindu to denote strength or vigour.
For these were the qualities associated with our land
and nation. In an Arab epic named, ' So hab Mo
Alakk ' it is said that the oppression of kith and kin are
bitterer or more fatal than the stroke of a Hindu
sword; while 'returning a Hindu answer' is a pro-
verbial way with the Persians themselves, by which they
are said to mean ' to strike bravely and deeply with an
Indian sword'. The ancient Babylonians had been in
the habit of denoting the finest quality of cloth as
Sindhu because it generally came from the Saptasindhus
— a custom which also shows that they also knew our
country by its ancient name Sindhu ; nor have we as yet
heard of any other meaning being attributed to this
word in the ancient Babylonian language than its
national one.

No Hindu can help feeling proud of himself at
the curious interpretation put upon this epithet by the
illustrious traveller, Yuan Chwang, himself belonging
to our highly civilized and ancient neighbours, the
Chinese, when he identifies our national name 'Hindu'
with the Sanskrit, 'Indu' and says in justification that
the world had rightly called this nation Indus' for they
and their civilization had like the moon ever been a
constant source of delight and refreshment to the
languid and weary soul of man. Does not all this
clearly show that the way of inspiring respect for our

76 HINDUTVA

name in the minds df men is not either to change or
deny it but to compel recognition of, and homage to it
by the valour of our arms, purity of our aims and the
sublimity of our souls? Even if we allow some of our
brethren to ride their hobby horse in all glee and get
themselves recognized and registered in the census
reports as 'Aryans 1 instead of as Hindus, yet they could
only succeed in dragging down the word 'Aryan' to their
own level and adding one more synonym to the
vocabulary of the words for a 'helot' and a 'cooly\ as
long as our natipn does not attain to the heights of
greatness and of strength as in the days of yore.

But apart from any serious argument against the
absurd proposal of denying the epithets, Hindu or
Hinduism, and granting for a while the stupid theory
that their origin is to be traced to the malice of foreig-
ners, we simply ask * Is it possible to deny them and coin
a new word for our national designation?' As it stands at
present the word Hindu has come to be the very banner
of our race and the one great feature that above all
others contributes to strengthen and uphold our racial
unity from Cape to Kashmir, from Attock to Cuttack. Do
you think you can change it as easily as a cap ? Once it
happened that a gentleman, well-meaning and patriotic
intended to get himself registered in the census records as
an Aryan instead of as a Hindu, as. he had been a victim
to the wide-spread lie that we were first called Hindus
by the Persian Mohammedans out of their contempt—
that the word meant a thief or a black man. Yet, I
could not enter into any detailed discussion about the
origin of the word for want of time and so simply quest i-

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 77

oned him as to what his own name was. He replied it was
'Taktasinghps "My good friend," I continued, "unlike
the word Hindu whose origin is at the worst disputable,
your name is indisputably a hybrid word and should
therefore be first replaced in the register by some ancient
and purely Aryan word, say Niaudgalayan59 or Simha-
sansinha."60 Having evaded the point for a w 7 hile he
tried to point out how difficult it was to do so aiid how
it would completely upset his economical position and
after allhow could he get the world to call him by the
new-fangled name or what could be gained at all by this
risky experiment of calling himself 'Sinhasansinh 5 while
all others persisted in calling him Taktasinha 'But', I
rejoined. 4 if to change your individual name, which is
indisputably foreign, seems to you so difficult, nay, harm-
ful, then, my friend, how much more difficult would it be
to change the name of a whole race which is so far from
being a foreign invention that it is ours as much as the
Vedas are ours ? And how much more futile V Of the
futility of any such attempt to change a deep-rooted
name, a far more convincing example than this personal
one is furnished by our Sikh brotherhood in the Punjab.
The band of the best and bravest of the Hindu race
whom our Great Guru had chosen, triumphantly
exclaiming, "The blue clothes are torn; the domination
of the Turks and the "Pathans is over.^i For the
expressed purpose of 62 the continuation of protec-
tion of religion, protection the saints, destruction of the

58 tfwftr^ 59 *far*r<swr 60 fa^r^Rftr?

61 ?fte ^3% ^<r£ <fili 3T3F q^Tuft 3r*r«ff jtitt

78 HINDUTVA

wicked, for this purpose I am born on this earth,
62 The class of warriors have given up their duty, and
have adopted the language of the Mlechchas. AH are
reduced to the one class of serfs. People have lost their
faith." The great Guru63 was daily greeted with a
64 ' Vah Guruji ki Fateh « Vah Gurujika Khalsa ! ' The
words Darbar, Diwan-Bahadur, have crept like thie-
ves to the very heart of our Harimandirs. They are the
scars of our old wounds. The wounds are healed but
the scars persist and seem to be incorporated with our
form. As long as any attempts to scratch them out
threaten to harm us more than profit, all that we can
do is to tolerate them ; for after all they are the scars
of the wounds received in a conflict that we have won
in a gory field in which we remained as the victors of
the day.

And yet, if any words, however closely they might
have been associated with things sacred, are to be
disowned and changed they are these, for they all are
indisputably foreign and reminiscent of alien domi-
nation. Does it not seem almost insincere that we who

62 «nt 'TOPFT *RT 3STTT*r, |5£ f^ft *{& OTT2T,- arf? sRSf

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 79

can not only tolerate but love these names, should
clamour to disown the epithet, Hindu or Hindusthan,
which is the very cradle name of our race and of our
land chosen by our patriarchs, recorded in the most
ancient and revered annals of the world, the Vedas ?
— An epithet which had proudly been borne by millions
of our countrymen on both sides of the Sindu for the
last forty centuries if not more; which expanded to and
embraced the whole of our country from Kashmir to the
Cape and from Attock to Cuttack; which sums up in
a word the whole geographical position of our race and
our land, Sindhu or Hindu; which had been recognized as
the sign of distinction to mark out 'The be^t nation
of the Aryans/ an epithet for which our foes hated us
and for which our warriors from Shalivahan to Shivaji
went forth in their thousands to keep up their fight
from century to century. It was this word, Hindu that
was found impressed on the ashes of Padmini and
Chitor. It was this word, Hindu, that was owned by
Tulsidas, Tukaram, Ramkrishna and Ramdas. Hindu-
padpadshahi was the dream of Ramdas, the mission of
Shivaji, the pole star of the ambitions of Bajirao and
Banda Bahadur, of Chhatrasal and Nanasaheb, of
Pratap and Pratapaditya. It was inscribed on the banner
defending which a hundred thousand Hindu heroes
fell inflicting fatal wounds on the foes on the battle-
field of Panipat— and Bhau at the head of them all,
sword in hand ! — within one single day ! It was for (he
Hmdupadpadshahi that inspite of all that martyrdom
and in virtue of it, Nana and Mahadji steered the
nation clear of all rocks and shoals and brought it

80 HINDUTVA

almost within sight of the coveted shores. It is this
epithet Hindu or Hind us than that, even to this day,
owns a loving allegiance of millions of our people
from the throne of Nepal to the begging bowl in the
street. To disown these words is like cutting off and
casting away the very heart of our people. You would
be dead before you do that. It is not only fatal but futile.
To oust the words, Hindu or Hindusthan, from the
position they hold is to try to oust the Himalayas from
theirs. Nothing but an earthquake with all its terrible
wrenches and appalling uncertainties can accomplish
that.

The objection that is levelled against the appella-
tions, Hiudu and Hindusthan on account of the mistaken
notion which attributed their origin to foreign sources
could, if left to itself, be easily laid low by advancing
indisputable historical facts. But as it is, this objection
is in some cases backed up by a secret fear that if the
epithet be honoured and owned, then all those who do
so would be looked upon as believers in the dogmas
and religious practices that go by the name 'Hinduism'.
This fear, though it is not often admitted openly, that
a Hindu is, necessarily and by the very fact that he is
a Hindu, a believer in the so-called Hinduism, makes
many a man determined not to get convinced that the
epithets are not an alien invention. Nor is this fear
totally unjustified. But it would be more candid if
those who entertain this fear should openly advance it
as the ground of their objection to being recognized as
Hindus and not try to hide it under a false and unten-
able issue. The superficial similarity between these two

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 81

terms Hindutva and Hinduism is responsible for this
regrettable estrangement that, at times, alienates well-
meaning gentlemen in our Hindu brotherhood. The
distinction between these two terms would be presently
made clear. Here it is enough to point out that if there
be really any word of alien growth it is this word
Hinduism and so we should not allow our thoughts to
get confused by this new-fangled term. That a man
can be as truly a Hindu as any without believing even in
the Vedas as an independent religious authority is quite
clear from the fact that thousands of our Jain brethren,
not to mention others, are for generations calling
themselves Hindus and would even to this day feel hurt
if they be called otherwise. We refer to this simply as
an actual fact apart from any detailed justification and
examination of it which would presently follow. Till
then, we hope our readers would not allow prejudicial
fear regarding the conclusion of our argument as to its
intrinsic merit and bear in mind that we have through-
out the foregoing pages been dealing not with any
'ism' whatever but with Hindutva alone in its national
and cultural aspects-

Now we are fairly in a postion to try to analyse
the contents of one of the most comprehensive and
bewilderingly synthetic concept known to human tongue.
Hindutva is a derivative word from Hindu, we have
seen that the earliest and the most sacred records of our
race show that the appellation, Saptasindhu or Hapt-
Hindu was applied to a region in which the Vedic
nation flourished. The geographical sense being the
primary one has, now contracting, now expanding, but

82 HINDUTVA

always persistently been associated with the words Hindu
and Hindus than till after the lapse of nearly 5000 years
if not more, Hindusthan has come to mean the whole
cotinental country from the Sindhu to Sindhu from the
Indus to the Seas. The most important factor that
contributes to the cohesion, strength and the sense of
unity of a people is that they should possess an inter-
nally well-connected and externally well-demarcated
4 local habitation, ' and a ' name ' that could, by its very
mention, rouse the cherished image of their mother-
land as well as the loved memories of their past. We are
happily blessed with both these important requisites
for a strong and united nation. Our land is so vast and
yet so well-knit, so well demarcated from others and
yet so strongly entrenched that no country in the world
is more closely marked out by the fingers of nature as a
geographical unit beyond cavil or criticism, as also is the
name Hindusthan or Hindu that it has come to bear.
The first image that it rouses in the mind is unmistakably
of our motherland and by an express appeal to its
geographical and physical features it vivifies it into a
living Being. Hindusthan meaning the land of Hindus,
the first essential of Hindutva must necessarily be this
geographical one. A Hindu is primarily a citizen either
in himself or through his forefathers of 'Hindusthan'
and claims the land as his motherland. In America as
well as in France the word Hindu is generally understood
thus exactly in the sense of an Indian without any
religious or cultural implication. And had the word
Hindu been left to convey this primary significance
only, which it had in common with all the words derived

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 83

from Sindhu then it would really have meant an
Indian, a citizen of Hindusthan as the word Hindi does.

Essential implications of Hindutva

But throughout our inquiry we have been
concerning ourselves more with what would have been
or what should be. Not that to paint what should be is
not a legitimate pursuit; nay, it is as necessary and at
times more stimulating; but even that could be better
done by first getting a firm hold of what actually is.
We must try, therefore, to be on our guard so that in
our attempt to determine the essentials of Hindutva we
be guided entirely by the actual contents of the word as
it stands at present. So although the root-meaning of the
word Hindu like the sister epithet Hindi may mean
only an Indian, yet as it is we would be straining the
usage of words too much — we fear, to the point of
breaking-if we call a Mohammedan a Hindu because of
his being a resident of India. It may be that at some
future time the word Hindu may come to indicate a
citizen of Hindusthan and nothing else; that day can
only rise when all cultural and religious bigotry has
disbanded its forces pledged to aggressive egoism, and
religions cease to be 'isms' and become merely the
common fund of eternal principles that lie at the root of
all that are a common foundation on which the Human
State majestically and firmly rests. But as even the first
streaks ©f this consummation, so devoutly to be wished
for, arc scarcely discernible on the horizon, it would be
folly for us to ignore stern realities. As long as every
other 'ism' has not disowned its special dogmas, which-

84 HINDUTVA

ever tend into dangerous war cries, so long no cultural
or national unit can afford to loosen the bonds,
especially those of a common name and a common
banner, that are the mighty sources of organic cohesion
and strength. An American may become a citizen of
India. He would certainly be entitled, if bona fide, to be
treated as our Bharatiya or Hindi, a countryman and a
fellow citizen of ours. But as long as in addition to our
country, he has not adopted our culture and our
history, inherited our blood and has come to look upon
our land not only as the land of his love but even of
his worship, he cannot get himself incorporated into
the Hindu fold. For although the first requisite of
Hindutva is that he be a citizen of Hindusthan either
by himself or through his forefathers, yet it is not the
only requisite qualification of it, as the term Hindu
has come to mean much more than its geographical
significance.

Bond of common blood

7'he reason that explains why the term Hindu
cannot be synonymous with Bharatiya or Hindi and
mean an Indian only, naturally introduces us to the
second essential implication of that term. The Hindus
are hot merely the citizens of the Indian state because
they are united not only by the bonds of the love they
bear to a common motherland but also by the bonds
of a common blood. They are not onLy a Nation 65 but
also a race-jati 66. The word jati derived from the

65 XT*? 66 5&rfa

ESSENTIALS OF HINBUTVA 85

root Jan 67 to produce, means a brotherhood, a race
determined by a common origin,-possessing a common
blood. All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood
of the mighty race incorporated with and descended
from the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus. We are well aware
of the not unoften interested objection that carpingly
questions 'but are you really a race ? Can you be said to
possess a common blood?* We can only answer by
questioning in return, 'Are the English a race ? Is there
anything as English blood, the French blood, the
German blood or the Chinese blood in this world?
Do they, who have been freely infusing foreign blood
into their race by contracting marriages with other
races and peoples possess a common Wood and claim
to be a race by themselves ? If they do, Hindus also
can emphatically do so. For the very castes, which you
owing to your colossal failure to understand and view
them in the tight perspective, assert to have barred the
common Bow of blood into our race, have done so
more truly and more effectively as regards the foreign
blood than our own. Nay. is not the very presence of
these present castes a standing testimony to a common
flow of blood from a Brahman to a Chandal ?68 Even a
cursory glance at any of our Smritis would conclusively
prove that the Anuloma69 and Pratiloma70 marriage
institutions were the order of the day and have given
birth to the majority of the castes that obtain amongst
us. If a Kshatriya has a son by a Shudra woman, he
gives birth to ' the Ugra caste; again, if the Kshatriya

67 3ffi 68 ^t^ra 69 3T^*r 70 srfawra

g6 HINDUTVA

raises an issue on an Ugra he founds a Shvapacha caste
while a Brahman mother arid a Shudra father beget the
caste, Chandal. From the Vedic story of Satyakama
Jabali to Mahadaji Shinde every page of our history
shows that the ancient Ganges of our blood has come
down from the altitudes of the sublime Vedic heights to
the plains of our modern history fertilizing much,
incorporating many a noble stream and purifying many
a lost soul, increasing in volume and richness, defying
the danger of being lost in bogs and sands and flows
to-day refreshed and reinvigorated more than ever. All
that the caste system has done is to regulate its noble
bood on lines believed-andon the whole rightly belie ved-
by our saintly and patriotic law-givers and kings to
contribute most to fertilize and enrich all that was
barren and poor, without famishing and debasing all
that was flourishing and nobly endowed.

This is true not only in the case of those that are
the outcome of the intermarriages between the chief
four castes, or between the chief four castes and the
cross-born but also in the case of those tribes or races
who somewhere in the dimness of the hoary past were
leading a separate and self-centred life. Witness the
customs prevalent in Malabar or Nepal where a Hindu
of the highest caste is allowed to marry a woman of
those who are supposed to be the originally alien tribes
but who, even if the suggestion be true, have by their
brave and loving defence of the Hindu culture have
been incorporated with and bound to us by the dearest
of ties — the ties of a common blood. Is the Nagavan-
sha a Dravidian family ? Well, then who is who now

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 87

when the youths of Agnivansha have taken to them the
daughters of the Nagas and the Chandravansha and
the Suryavansha have bestowed their daughters on the
youths of both the families? Down to the day of
Harsha-not to mention the partial break-down of the
caste-system itself in the centuries of Buddhistic sway
—intermarriages were the order of the day. Take
for example the case of a single family of the
Pandawas. The sage Parashar was a Brahman. He fell
in love with the fair maid of a fisherman who gave
birth to the world -renowned Vyas, who in his turn
raised two sons on the Kshatriya princesses Amba and
Ambalika; one of these two sons, Pandu allowed his
wives to raise issue by resorting to the Niyoga system
and they having solicited the love of men of unknown
castes, gave birth to the heroes of our great epic.
Without mentioning equally distinguished characters of
the same period Kama, Babhruwahana, Ghatotkacha,
Vidur and others, we beg to point out to the relatively
modern cases of Chandragupta said to have married a
Brahman girl who gave birth to the father of Ashok;
Ashok who had as a prince married a Vaishya maid ;
Harsha who being a Vaishya gave his daughter in
marriage to a Kshatriya prince ; Vyadhakarma who is
said to be the son of a Vyadha with whom his mother, a
Brahman girl, had fallen in love and who grew to be
the ' Yajnacharya of Vikramaditya, Surdas; Krishna
Bhatta who being a Brahman fell so desperately in love
with a Chandala girl as to lead an open married life
with her and subsequently became the founder of the
religious sect Matangi Pantha ; who nevertheless call

88 HINDUTVA

themselves and are perfectly entitled to be recognized
as Hindus. This is not all. An individual at times by
his or her own actions may lose his or her first caste
and be relegated to another. A Shudra can become
a Brahman and Brahman become a Shudra. The
injunction

[The family is not really called a family; it is the
practices and customs that are called a family. One
that does his duties is praised on earth and in. heaven.]
was not always an empty threat. Many a Kshatriya
has by taking to agriculture and other occupations of
life lost the respect due to a Kshatriya and were classed
with some of the other castes; while many a brave
man, in cases whole tribes, raised themselves to the
position, the rights and titles of the Kshatriyas and
were recognized as such. Being outcast from a caste,
which is an event of daily occurrence, is only getting
incorporated with some other.

Not only is this true so far as those Hindus only
who believe in the caste system based on the Vedic
tenets, are concerned, but even in the case of Avaidik
sects of the Hindu people. As it was true in the
Buddhistic period that a Buddhist father, a Vaidik
mother, a Jain son, could be found in a single joint
family, so even to-day Jains and Vaishnavas intermarry

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA £9

in Gujarat, Sikhs and Sanatanis in Punjab and Sind.
Moreover, today's Manbhav or Lingayat or Sikh or
Satnami is yesterday's Hindu and to-dav's Hindu may
be tomorrow's Lingayat or Bramho or Sikh.

And no word can give full expression to this
racial unity of our people as the epithet, Hindu, does.
Some of us were Aryans and some Anaryans ; but
Ayars and Nayars — we were all Hindus and own a
common blood. Some of us are Brahmans and some
Namashudras or Panchamas; but Brahmans or Chanda-
las— we are all Hindus and own a common blood. Some
of us are Daxinatyas and some Gauds ; but Gauds or
Saraswatas — we are all Hindus and own a common
blood. Some of us were Rakhasas and some Yakshas;
but Rakshasas or Yakshas — we are all Hindus and
own a common blood. Some of us were Vanaras and
some Kinnaras ; but Vanaras or Naras — we are all
Hindus and own a common blood. Some of us are
Jains and some Jangamas ; but Jains or Jangamas — we
are all Hindus and own a common blood. Some of us
are monists, some, pantheists ; some theists and some
atheists. But monotheists or atheists-we are all Hindus
and own a common blood. We are not only a nation
but a Jati, a born brotherhood. Nothing else counts, it
is after all a question of heart. We feel that the same
ancient blood that coursed through the veins of Ram
and Krishna, Buddha and Mahavir, Nanak and
Chaitanya, Basava and Madhava, of Rohidas and Tiru-
velluvar courses throughout Hindudom from vein
to vein, pulsates from heart to heart. Wo feel we are a

90 HINDUTVA

J ATI, a race bound together by the dearest ties of
blood and therefore it must be so.

After all there is throughout this world so far as
man is concerned but a single race— the human race
kept alive by one common blood, the human blood.
All other talk is at best provisional, a makeshift and
only relatively true. Nature is constantly trying to
overthrow the artificial barriers you raise between race
and race. To try to prevent the commingling of blood
is to build on sand. Sexual attraction has proved
more powerful than all the commands of all the
prophets put together. Even as it is, not even the
aborigines of the Andamans are without some sprink-
ling of the so-called Aryan blood in their veins and
vice versa Truly speaking all that any one of us can
claim, all that history entitles one to claim, is that one
has the blood of all mankind in one's veins. The
fundamental unity of man from pole to pole is true,
all else only relatively so.

And speaking relatively alone, no people in the
world can more justly claim to get recognized as a racial
unit than the Hindus and perhaps the Jews. A Hindu
marrying a Hindu may lose his caste but not his
Hindutva. A Hindu believing in any theoretical or
philosophical or social system, orthodox or heterodox,
provided it is unquestionably indigenous and founded
by a Hindu may lose his sect but not his Hindutva-his
Hinduness — because the most important essential which
determines it is the inheritance of the Hindu blood
Therefore all those who love the land that stretches

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 91

from Sindhu to Sindhu from the Indus to the Seas, as
their fatherland consequently claim to inherit the blood
of the race that has evolved, by incorporation and adap-
tation, from the ancient Suptasindhus can be said to
possess two of the most essential requisites of Hindutva.

Common culture

But only two; because a moment's consideration
would show that these two qualifications of one nation
and one race— of a common fatherland and therefore
of a common blood — cannot exhaust all the requisites
of Hindutva. The majority of the Indian Mohammedans
may, if free from the prejudices born of ignorance,
come to love our land as their fatherland, as the patri-
otic and noble-minded amongst tbem have always
been doing. The story of their conversions, forcible in
millions of cases, is too recent (o make them forget,
even if they like to do so, that they inherit Hindu blood
in their veins. But can we, who here are concerned
with investigating into facts as they are and not as they
should be, recognize these Mohammedans as Hindus ?
Many a Mohammedan community in Kashmir and
other parts of India as well as the Christians in
South India observe our caste rules to such an extent
as to marry generally within the pale of their
castes alone; yet, it is clear that though their
original Hindu blood is thus almost unaffected by
an alien adulteration, yet they cannot be called
Hindus in the sense in which that term is actually
understood, because, we Hindus are bound together
not only by the tie of the love we bear to a common

92 HINDUTVA

fatherland and by the common blood that courses
through our veins and keeps our hearts throbbing
and our affections warm, but also by the tie of the
common homage we pay to our great civilization — our
Hindu culture, which could not be better rendered than
by the word Sanskriti7i suggestive as it is of that
language, Sanskrit, which has been the chosen means
of expression and preservation of that culture, of
all that was best and worth-preserving in the history
of our race. We are one because we are a nation a
race and own a common Sanskriti (civilization).

What is civilization ?

But what is civilization ? Civilization is the expre-
ssion of the mind of man. Civilization is the account
of what man has made of matter. If matter is the
creation of the Lord, then civilization is the miniature
secondary creation of man. At its best it is the perfect
triumph of the soul of man over matter and man alike.
Wherever and to the extent to which man has succeed-
ed in moulding matter to the delight of his soul, civili-
zation begins. And it triumphs when he has tapped all
the sources of Supreme Delight satisfying the spiritual
aspirations of his being towards strength and beauty
and love, realising Life in all its fulness and richness.

The story of the civilization of a nation is the
story of its thoughts, its actions and its achievements.
Literature and art tell us of its thoughts; history and
social institutions of its actions and achievements. In

71 tfSfjfa

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 93

none of these can man remain isolated. The primitive
'dungi' (canoe) of the Andamanese can truly claim to
have influenced the up-to-date dreadnoughts of Ameri-
ca. The latest adventure of fashion amongst the fair sex
in Paris is but the lineal descendant of the bunch of
leaves stuck in the girdle-string which constitutes the
perfection of the toilet of a Tatua' girl.

And yet a 'dungi' remains a dun gi and a dread-
nought, a dreadnought; they are too much more unlike
each other than like to be identified as one and the
same. Even so, although the Hindus have lent much
and borrowed much like any other people, yet their
civilization is too characteristic to be mistaken for any
other cultural unit. And secondly, however striking
their mutual differences be, they are too much more
like each other than unlike, to be denied the right of
being recognized as a cultural unit amongst other such
units in the world owning a common history,a common
literature and a common civilization

Paradoxical as it may sound to those who have
fallen victims to the interested or ignorant cry that has
secured the ear of the present world that the Hindus
have no history, it nevertheless remains true that
Hindus are about the only people who have succeeded
in preserving their history— riding through earthquakes,
bridging over deluges. It begins with their Vedas which
are the first extant chapter of the story of our race.
The first cradle songs that every Hindu girl listens to are
the songs of Sita, the good. Some of us worship Rama as
an incarnation, some admire him as a hero and a

94 HINDUTVA

warrior, and all love hi m as the most illustrious represen-
tative monarch of our race. Maruti and Bheemsen,
are the never failing source of strength and physical
perfection to the Hindu youth; Savitri and Damayanti,
the never failing ideals of constancy and chastity of the
Hindu maid. The love that Radha made to the Divine
Cow-herd in Gokul finds its echo wherever a Hindu
lover kisses his beloved. The giant struggle of the
Kurus, the set duels of Arjun and Kama, of Bhcem
and Dusshasan that took place on the field of Kuru-
kshetra thousands of years ago, are rehearsed in all
their thrill from cottage to cottage and from palace to
palace. Abhimanyu could not have been dearer to Arjun
than he is to us. From Ceylon to Kashmir, Hindusthan
daily sheds tears as lovingly and as bitterly as his father
did at the mention of the fall of that lotus-eyed
youth. What more shall we say ? The story of Rama-
yan and Mahabharat alone would bring us together and
weld us into a race even if we be scattered to all the
four winds like a handful of sand. I read the life of a
Mazzini and I exlcaim, 'How patriotic they are !' I read
the life of a Madhavacharya and exclaim, 4 How patriotic
we are ! ' The fall of prithwiraj is bewailed in Bengal:
the martyred sons of Govindsing, in Maharashtra An
Aryasamajist historian in the extreme north feels that
Harihar and Bukka of the extreme south fought for
him, and a Santanaist historian in the extreme south
feels that Guru Tejbahadur died for him. We had kings
in common. We had kingdoms in common. We had
stability in common. We had triumphs in common and
disasters in common The names of Mokavasayya and

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 95

Pisal, Jayachand and Kalapahad?2 make us all feel as
sinners do. The names of Ashok, Bhaskaracharya, Panini
and Kapila?3 leave us all electrified with a sense <ol
personal elevation.

But what about the internecine wars amongst
Hindus? We answer, what about the Wars of Roses
amongst the English? What of theinternecine struggle,
of state against state, sect against sect, class against
class, each invoking foreign help against his own coun-
trymen, in Italy, in Germany, in France, in Anierica ?
Are they still a people, a nation and do they possess a
common history ? IF they do, the Hindus do. If the
Hindus do not possess a common history, then none in
the world does.

As our history tells the story of the action of our
race, so does our literature taken in its fullest sense tell
the story of the thought of our race. Thought, they say,
is inseparable from our common tongue, Sanskrit.
Verily it is our mother-tongue— the tongue in which
the mothers of our race spoke and which has given
birth to all our present tongues. Our gods spoke in
Sanskrit, our sages thought in Sanskrit, our poets
wrote in Sanskrit. All that is best in us — the best thou-
ghts, the best ideas, the best lines — seeks instinctively
to clothe itself in Sanskrit. To millions it is still
the language of their gods; to others it is the language
of their ancestors; to all it is the language par

12. rfteT^m^i, trow, sFsnre, ^wr^s,
73- ai srr^ irwwwf , ^Tftrfay ^flra.

96 HINDUTVA

excellence; a common inheritance, a common treasure,
that enriches all the family of our sister languages.
Gujarati and Gurumukhi, Sindhi and Hindi, Tamil,
and Telugu, Maharastra and Malyalam, Bengali and
Singali constitute the vital nerve -thread that runs
through us all vivifying and toning our feelings and
aspirations into a harmonious whole. It is not a lang-
uage alone; to many Hindus, it is a Mantra, to all it is
a music. The Vedas do not constitute an authority for
all Jains. But the Vedas as the most ancient work and
the history of their race belong to Jains as much as to
any of us. Adipuran was not written by a Sanatani, yet
the Adipuran 74 is the common inheritance of the Sanata-
nis and the Jains. The Baisavapurana is the Bible of the
Lingayats; but it belongs to Lingayat and non-Lingayat
Hindus alike, as one of the foremost and historical
Kanarese work extant. Vichitranatak of Guru Govind
is as truly the property of a Hindu in Bengal as the
Chaitanyacharitramrit is of a Sikh. Kalidas and Bhav-
bhuti, Charak and Sushrut, Aryabhatt and Varahamihii a,
Bhasa and Ashvaghosha, Jayadev and Jagannath wrote
for us all, appeal to us all, are the cherished possession
of us all. Let the work of Kamba, the Tamil poet and
say, a copy of Haf iz be kept before a Hindu in Bengal
and if he be asked 'Which of these belongs to you?* He
would instinctively say, 'Kamba is mine! * Let a copy of
the work of Ravindranath and that of Shakespeare be

74 arrfajTro, ^raycm, fafe^z*;, ^^r^Ti^mj^

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 97

kept before a Hindu in Maharashtra, he would claim
'Ravindra ! Ravindra is mine.'

The woiks of art and architecture are also a
common inheritance of our race, whether they be repre-
sentative ofVaidik or Avaidik school of thought. For
all the labourers who wrought them, the masters who
guided them, the tax -papers who financed them and the
kings who organised them, whether Vaidik or Avaidik
belonged to the great race that inhabits and owns this
land from Sihdhu to Sindhu— the Hindu race. Those
who are Sanatanis today have contributed and labouied
for the Buddhistic monuments of art and architecture
then, while these who were Buddhistic then have con-
tributed to and laboured for the monuments, of the
Sanatani art and architecture now.

Commons laws and rites

Common institutions and a common law that sanctions
and sanctifies them, however they may differ in details
are nevertheless both the cause and the effect of the
basic unity of our race. The Hindu law with the
underlying principles of Hindu jurisprudence whatever
the superficial differences be and howsoever contradicto
ry a detail here or an injunction there may seem to be,
is too organic a growth to lose its individuality by the*
manifold changes wrought by times and climes- Jn spite
of the feverish speed with which the law-machines
in the different states of America and British Common-
wealth keep manufacturing and modelling laws we still
acknowledge the principles of jurisprudence and the

9$ HINDUTVA

lines of growth that underlie their code to, constitute a
single whole. The English law, or the Roman jurispru-
dence or the American law could not be designated as
such if eternal identity or a dead level similarity is
expected. The Mohammedan law retains its individuality
inspite of such damaging exceptions to it as the Khojas
or the Bohras who like some other Mohammedan
communities, observe the Hindu law in regulating some
departments of their life, notably in matters of inherit-
ance- Some of the Hindu customs in Maharashtra or
Panjab may differ from -some in Bengal or Sind. But
the similarity in all other details is so great that the law
of Maharashtra as a whole seems to be an echo of
the law-book ruling our brothers in Bengal or Sind
and vice versa. When all the rules, customs and laws
observed by any given community are collected
together it can immediately be found to be nothing but
a fitting chapter of the Hindu law while no amount of
ingenuity or torture can fit in, say the English or
the Mohammedan or the Japanese law-books.

We have feasts and festivals in common. We have
rites and rituals in common. The Dasara and the Divali
the Rakhibandhan and the Holi are welcomed
wherever a Hindu breathes, S^khs and Jains,
Brahmans and Panchams alike- You would find the
whole Hindu kingdom enfete on the Divali day, not
only Hindusthan, but the Greater Hindusthan that is
fast growing in all the continents of the world- Not
even a cottage in the Tarai forest could be found on
that night that has not shown its little light. While
the Rakhi day would reveal to you every Hindu soul

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 99

from the delighted damsel of Punjab to the austere
Brahmins of Madras tying the silken tie that, 'heart to
heart and mind to mind, in body and in soul, can bind,'
Yet we have deliberately refrained ourselves from
referring to any religious beliefs that we as a race may
hold in common . Nor had we referred to any
institution or event or custom in its religious aspect or
significance, because we wanted to deal with the
essentials of Hindutva not in the light of any 'ism* but
from a racial point of view ; and yet from a national
and racial point of view do the different places of
pilgrimage constitute, common inheritance of our
Hindu race. The Rathayatra festival at Jagannath, the
Vaishakhi at Amritsar, the'-Kumbha and Ardhakumbha-
all these great gatherings had been the real and living
congress of our people that kept the current of life
and the thought coursing throughout our body politic-
The quaint customs and ceremonies and sacraments
they involve, observed by some as a religious duty, by
others as social amenities, impress upon each individual
that he can live best only through the common and
corporate life of the Hindu race.

These then in short — and the subject in hand does
not permit us to be exhaustive on this point — constit-
ute the essence of our civilization and mark us out a
cultural unit. We Hindus are not only a Rashtra, a
Jati, but as a consequence of being both, own a common
Sanskriti expressed, preserved chiefly and originally
through Sankrit, the real mother tongue of our race.
Everyone who is a Hindu inherits this Sanskriti and
owes his spiritual being to it as truly as he owes hi s

100 HINDUTVA

physical one to the land and the blood of his
forefathers.

A Hindu then is he who feels attachment to the
land that extends from Sindhu to Sindhu as the land
of his forefathers — as his Fatherland; who inherits
the blood of the great race whose first and discernible
source could be traced from the Himalayan altitudes of
the Vedic Saptasindhus and which assimilating all
that was incorporated and ennobling all that was
assimilated has grown into and come to be known as
the Hindu people; and who, as a consequence of the
foregoing attributes, has inherited and claims as his
own the Hindu Sanskrit!, the Hindu civilization, as
represented in a common history, common heroes, a
common literature, common art, a common law and a
common jurisprudence, common fairs and festivals,
rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments. Not that
every Hindu has all these details of the Hindu Sanskri-
ti down to each syllable common with other Hindus ;
but that he has more of it common With his Hindu
brothers than with, say, an Arab or an Englishman. Not
that a non-Hindu does not hold any of these details
in common with a Hindu but that, he differs more from
a Hindu than he agrees with him. That is why Christi-
an and Mohammedan communities, who, were but Very
recently Hindus and in a majority of cases had been at
least in their first generation most unwilling denizens of
their new fold, claim though they might have a comm-
on Fatherland, and an almost pure Hindu blood and
parentage with us, cannot be recognized as Hindus ; as
since their adoption of the new cult they had ceased

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 101

to own Hindu civilization (Sanskriti) as a whole.
They belong, or feel that they belong, to a cultural unit
altogether different from the Hindu one. Their heroes
and their hero-worship, their fairs and their festivals,
their ideals and their outlook on life, have now ceased
to be common with ours. Thus the presence of this
third essential of Hindutva which requires of every
Hindu uncommon and loving attachment to his racial
Sanskriti enables us most perfectly to determine the
nature of Hindutva without any danger of using over
lapping or exclusive attributes.

But take the case of a patriotic Bohra or a Khoja
countryman of ours. He loves our land of Hindusthan
as his Fatherland which indisputably is the land of his
forefathers. He possesses — in certain cases they do —
pure Hindu blood; especially if he is the first convert to
Mohammedanism he must be allowed to claim to inherit
the blood of Hindu parents. He is an intelligent and
reasonable man, loves our history and our heroes; in
fact the Bohras and the Khojas as a community, wor-
ship as heroes our great ten Avatars only adding
Mohammad as the eleventh. He is actually, along with
his community subject to the Hindu law — the law of
his forefathers. He is, so far as the three essentials
of nation (Rashtra), race (Jati) and civilization
( Sanskriti ) are concerned, a Hindu. He may differ
as regards a few festivals or may add a few more
heroes to the pantheon of his supermen or demi-
gods. But we have repeatedly said that difference
in details here or emphasis there, does not throw us
outside the pale of Hindu Sanskriti. The sub-commu-

102 HINDUTVA

nities amongst the Hindus observe many a custom,
not only contradictory but even, conflicting with, the cus-
toms of other Hindu communities. Yet both of them
are Hindus, So also in the above cases of patriotic
Bohra or a Christian or a Khoja, who could satisfy the
required qualifications of Hindutva to such a degree
as that, why should he not be recognized as a Hindu ?

He would certainly have been recognized as such
but for his attitude towards a single detail, which,
though it is covered by the words, Sanskriti or culture,
is yet too important to be lost in the multitude of
other attributes, and therefore deserves a special treat-
ment and analysis, whicji again brings us face to face
with the question which, involving as it does the religi-
ous aspect of Hindutva, had often been avoided by us,
not because we fight shy of it, but on account of our
wish to fight it out all the more thoroughly and effect-
ively. For, we are now better equipped to determine
the significance and attempt an analysis of the two
terms Hinduism and Hindutva.

Who is a Hindu ?

The words Hindutva and Hinduism both of them
being derived from the word Hindu, must necessarily be
understood to refer to the whole of the Hindu people
Any definition of Hinduism that leaves out any impor-
tant section of our people and forces fchem either to
play false to their convictions or to go outside the pale

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 103

ofHindutva stands self-condemned. Hinduism means
the system of religious beliefs found common amongst
the Hindu people. And the only way to find out what
those religious beliefs of the Hindus are, /. £., what
constitutes Hinduism, you must first define a Hindu.
But forgetting this chief implication of the word, Hin-
duism which clearly presupposes an independent conce-
ption of a Hindu many people go about to determine
the essentials of Hinduism and finding none so satisfac-
tory as to include, without overlapping all our Hindu
communities, come to the desperate conclusion— which
does not satisfy them either — that therefore those
communities are not Hindus at all; not because
the definition they had framed is open to the fault
of exclusion but because those communities do not
subject themselves to the required tenets which these
gentlemen have thought it fit to lable as 'Hinduism'.
This way of answering the question 'who is a Hindu'
is really preposterous and has given rise to so much of
bitterness amongst some of our brethren of Avaidik
school of thought, the Sikh, the Jain, the Devsamaji
and even our patriotic and progressive Aryasamajis.

' Who is a Hindu ? ' — he who is subject to the
tenets of Hinduism. Very well. What is Hinduism ? —
those tenets to which the Hindus are subjected. This is
very nearly arguing in a circle and can never lead to a
satisfactory solution. Many of our friends who have
been on this wrong track have come back to tell us
* there are no such people as Hindus at all ! ' If some
Indian, as gifted as that Englishman who first coined
the word Hinduism, coins a parallel word 'Englishism '

104 HINDUTVA

and proceeds to find out the underlying unity of beliefs
amongst the English people, gets disgusted with
thousands of sects and societies from Jews to the
Jacobins, from Trinity to Utility, and comes out to
announce that 6 there are no such people as the English
at all,' he would not make himself more ridiculous than
those who declare in cold print ' there is nothing as a
Hindu people. ' Any one vyho wants to see what a
confusion of thought prevails on the point and how
the failure to analyse separately the two terms
Hindutva and Hinduism renders that confusion worst
confounded may do well to go through the booklet
' Essentials of Hinduism * published by the enterpris-
ing ' Natesan and Co. '

Hinduism means the ' ism ' of the Hindu ; and as
the word Hindu has been derived from the word
Sindhu, the Indus, meaning primarily all the people
who reside in the land that extends from Sindhu to
Sindhu, Hinduism must necessarily mean the religion
or the religions that are peculiar and native to this land
and these people. If we are unable to reduce the
different tenets and beliefs to a single system of religion
then the only way would be to cease to maintain that
Hinduism is a system and to say that it is a set of
systems consistent with, or if you like, contradictory or
even conflicting with, each other. But in no case can
you advance this your failure to determine the meaning
of Hinduism as a ground to doubt the existence of the
Hindu nation itself, or worse still to commit a sacrilege
in hurting, the feelings of our Avaidik brethren and

ESSENTIALS OF HINDTJTVA 105

Vaidik Hindu brethren alike, by relegating any of them
to the Non-Hindu pale.

The limits of this essay do not permit us to
determine the nature or the essentials of Hinduism or
to try to discuss it at any great length. As we have
shown above the enquiry into what is Hinduism can
only begin after the question ' who is a Hindu ' ? is
rightly answered determining the essentials of Hind u-
tva ; and as it is only with these essentials of Hindutva,
which enable us to know who is a Hindu, that this our
present enquiry is concerned, the discussion of
Hinduism Falls necessarily outside of our scope. We
have to take cognizance of it only so far as it trespasses
on the field of our special charge. Hinduism is a word
that properly speaking should be applied to all the
religious beliefs that the different communities of the
Hindu people hold. But it is generally applied to that
system of religion which the majority of the Hindu
people follow. It is natural that a religion or a country
or community should derive its name from the
characteristic feature which is common to an over-
whelming majority that constitutes or contributes to it.
It is also convenient for easy reference or parlance.
But a convenient term that is not only delusive but
harmful and positively misleading should not any
longer be allowed to blind our judgement. The majo-
rity of the Hindus subscribes to that system of
religion which could fitly be described by the attribute
that constitutes its special feature, as told by Shruti,
Smriti and Puranas or Sanatan Dharma. They would
not object if it even be called Vaidik. Dharma. But

106 HINDUTVA

besides these there are other Hindus who reject either
partly or wholly, the authority— some of the Puranas,
some of the Smritis and some of the Shrutis them-
selves. But if you identify the religion of the Hindus
with the religion of the majority only and call it
orthodox Hinduism, then the different heterodox com-
munities being Hindus themselves rightly resent this
usurpation of Hindutva by the majority as well as
their unjustifiable exclusion. The religion of the
minorities also requires a name. But if you call the so-
called orthodox religion alone as Hinduism then
naturally it follows that the religion of the so-called
heterodox js not Hinduism. The next most fatal step
being that, therefore, those sections are not Hindus at
all ! ! But this inference seems as staggering even to
those who had unwillingly given whole-hearted
support to the premises which have made it logically
inevitable that while hating to own it they hardly know
to avoid arriving at it And thus we find that while
millions of our Sikhs, Jains, Lingayats, several
Samajis and others would deeply resent to be told that
they — whose fathers' fathers up to the tenth genera-
tion had the blood of Hindus in their veins — had
suddenly ceased to be Hindu ! — yet a section amongst
them takes it most emphatically for granted that they
had been faced with a choice that either they should
consent to be a party to those customs and beliefs
which they had in their puritanic or progressive zeal
rejected as superstitions, or they should cease to belong
to that race to which their forefathers belonged.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 107

Alt this bitterness is mostly due to the wrong use
of the word, Hinduism, to denote the religion of the
majority only. Either the word should be restored to
its proper significance to denote the religions of all
Hindus or if you fail to do that it should be dropped
altogether. The religion of the majority of the Hindus
could be best denoted by the ancient accepted appella-
tion, the Sanatan dharma or the Shruti-smriti-puranokta
Dbarma 75 or the Vaidik Dharma; while the religion of
the remaining Hindus would continue to be denoted by
their respective and accepted names Sikha Dharma or
Arya Dharma or Jain Dharma or Buddha' Dharma.
Whenever the necessity of denoting these Dharmas as a
whole arises then alone we may be justified in denoting
them by the generic term Hindu Dharma or Hinduism.
Thus there would be no loss either in clearness, or in
conciseness but on the other hand a gain both in
precision and unamibguity which by removing the
cause of suspicion in our minor communities and
resentment in the major one would once more unite
us all Hindus under our ancient banner representing a
common race and a common civilization.

The earliest records that we have got of the religi-
ous beliefs of any Indian community — not to speak of
mankind itself— are the Vedas. The Vedic nation of the
Saptasindhus was sub-divided into many a tribe and
class. But although the majority then held a faith that we
for simplicity call Vedic religion, yet it was not contri-
buted to by an important minority of the Sindhus them-

75 ' ^r^jjfcrg^Fft^^r^: '

108 HINDUTVA

selves. The Panees, the Dasas, the Vratyas'6 and many
others from time to time seem to have either seceded
from or never belonged to the orthodox church and yet
racially and nationally they were conscious of being a
people by themselves. There was such a thing as Vedic
religion, but it could not even be idenitfied with Sindhu
Dharma; for the latter term, had it been coined, would
have naturally meant the set of religions prevailing in
Saptasindhu, othodox as well as heterodox. By a pro-
cess of elimination and assimilation the race of the
Sindhus at lasc grew into the race of Hindus, and the
land of the Sindhus i. e. Sindhustan, into the land of
the Hindus i. e. Hindusthan. While their orthodox and
the heterodox schools of religions have, — having tested
much, dared much and known much, — having subjected
to the most searching examination possible till then,
all that lay between the grandest and the tiniest, from the
atom to the Atman— from the Paramanu to the Para-
brahma,— having sounded the deepest secrets of thoughts
and having soared to the highest altitudes of ecstasy, —
given birth to a synthesis that sympathises with all
aspirants towards truth from the monist to the atheist.
Truth was its goal, realization its method. It is neither
Vedic nor non- Vedic, it is both. It is the veritable
science of religion applied. This is Hindudharma — the
conclusion of the conclusions arrived at by harmonising
the detailed experience of all the schools of religious
thought-Vaidik, Sanatani, Jain, Baudda, Sikha or De-
vasamaji. Each one and every one of those systems or

76 <r*ft, ?ra, ?rfc*T

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 109

sects which are the direct descendants and developments
of the religious beliefs Vaidik and non-VaidiL that
obtained in the land of the Saptasindhus or in the other
unrecorded communities in other parts of India in the
Vedic period, belongs to and is an integral part of Hin-
du dharma.

Therefore the Vaidik or the Sanatan Dharma itself
is merely a sect of Hinduism or Hindu Qharma, how-
ever overwhelming be the majority that contributes to
its tenets. It was a definition of this Sanatan Dharma
which the late Lokamanya Tilak framed in the famous
verse.

Belief in the Vedas, many means, no strict rule for
worship-these are the features of the Hindu religion.

In a learned article that he had contributed to the
Chitramaya jagat which bears the mark of his deep erudi-
tion and insight Lokmanya in an attempt to develop
this more or less negative definition into a positive one,
had clearly suggested that he had an eye not on Hindu-
tva as such but. only on what was popularly called
Hindudharma, and had also admitted that it could hard-
ly include in its sweep the Aryasamajis and other sects
which nevertheless are racially and nationally Hindus
of Hindus. That definition, excellent so far as it goes,
is in fact not a definition of Hindudharma, much less
of Hindutva but of Sanatan Dharma— the Shruti-Smri-

HO HINDUTVA

ti-puranokta77 sect, which being the most popular of all
sects of Hindu Dharma was naturally but loosely mis-
taken for Hindu Dharma itself.

Thus Hindu Dharma being etymologically as well
as actually and in its religious aspects only, (for Dharma
is not merely religion) the religion of the Hindus, it
necessarily partakes of all the essentials that character-
ise a Hindu. We have found that the first important
essential qualification of a Hindu is that to him the
land that extends from Sindhu to Sindhu is the Father-
land, (Pitribhu) the Motherland (Matribhu) the land
of his patriarchs and forefathers. The system or set of
religions which we call Hindu Dharma — Vaidik and
Non-Vaidik — is as truly the offspring of this soil as
the men whose thoughts they are or who 'saw' the
Truth revealed in them. To Hindu Dharma with all its
sects and systems this land, Sindhusthan, is the land of
its revelation, the land of its birth on this human
plane. As the Ganges, though flowing from the lotus
feet of Vishnu himself, is even to the most orthodox
devotee and mystic so far as human plane is concerned
the daughter of the Himalayas, even so, this land is the
birth-place — the Matribhu (motherland) and the Pitri-
bhu (fatherland) — of that Tatvajnana (philosophy)
which in its religious aspect is signified as Hindu Dha-
rma. The second most important essential of Hindutva
is that a Hindu is a descendant of Hindu parents, cla-
ims to have the blood of the ancient Sindhu and the
race that sprang from them in his veins. This also is

77 «rfcr^JTfcr-3TTift^r

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA m

true of the different schools of religion of the Hindus;
for they too being either founded by or revealed to
the Hindu sages, and seers are the moral and cultural
and spiritual descendants and development of the Tho-
ught of Saptasindhus through the process of assimilati-
on and elimination, as we are of their seed. Not only
is Hindu Dharma the growth of the natural environ-
ments and of the thought of the Indus, but also of
the Sanskriti or culture of the Hindus. The environ-
mental frames in which its scenes, whether of the
Vaidik period or of Bauddha, Jain or any extremely
modern ones of Chaitanya, Chakradhar, Basava, Nanak,
Dayananda or Raja Rammohan, are set; the technical
terms and the language that furnished expression to its
highest revelation and ecstasies, its mythology and its
philosophy, the conceptions it controverted and the
conceptions it adopted, have the indelible stamp of
Hindu culture, of Hindu Sanskriti, impressed upon
them. Hindu Dharma of all shades and schools, lives
and grows and has its being in the atmosphere of Hindu
culture, and the Dharma of a Hindu being so comple-
tely identified with the land of the Hindus, this land to
him is not only a Pitribhu but a Punyabhu, not only a
fatherland but a holyland

Yes, this Bharatbhumi, this Sindusthan, this land
of ours that stretches from Sindhu to Sindhu is our
Punyabhumi, for it was in this land that the Founders of
our faith and the Seers to whom 'Veda' the Knowledge
was revealed, from Vaidik seers to Dayananda, from
Jina to Mahavir, from Buddha to Nagasen, from Nanak
to Govind, from Banda to Basava, from Chakradhar

112 HINDUTVA

to Chaitanya, from Ramdas to Raramohan, our Gurus,
and Godmen were born and bred. The very dust of its
paths echoes the footfalls of our Prophets and Gurus.
Sacred are its rivers, hallowed its groves, for it was
either on their moonlit ghats or under their eventide
long shadows, that the deepest problemsof life, of man,
soul and God, of Brahma and Maya, were debated and
discussed by a Buddha pr a Shankar. Ah' every hill and
dellis instinct with memories of a Kapil or a Vyas %
Shankar or Ramdas. Here Bhagirath rules, there
Kurukshetra lies. Here Ramchandra made his first halt
of an exile, there Janaki saw the golden deer and fondly
pressed her love.r to kill it. Here the divine Cowherd
played on his flute that made every heart in Gokul
dance in harmony as if in a hypnotized sleep. Here
is Bodhi Vriksha, here the deer-park, here Mahaveer
entered Nirvana. Here stood crowds of worshippers
amongst whom Nanak sat and sang.the Arati 'the sun &
the moon are the lights in the plate of the sky ! 78 Here
Gopichand the king look on vows of Gopichand the Jogi
and with a bowl in his hand knocked at his sister's door
for a handful of alms ! Here the son of Bandabahadur
was hacked to pieces before the eyes of his father and
the young bleeding heart of the son thrust in the
father's mouth for the fault of dying as a Hindu ! Every
stone here has a storv of martyrdom to tell ! Every
inch of thy soil, O Mother ! has been a sacrificial
ground! Not only 'where the Krishnasar is found' but
from Kasmir to Sinhar it is * Land of sacrifice, ' sancti*

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 1J3

lied with a Jnana Yajna or an Atmaajna. ( self-
sacrifice) So to every Hindu, from the Santal to the
Sadhu this Bharata bhumi this Sindhusthan is at once a
Pitribhu and a Punyabhu — fatherland and a holy land.

That is why in the case of some of our Mohamme-
dan or Christian countrymen who had originally been
forcibly converted to a non-Hindu religion and who
consequently have inherited along with Hindus, a
common Fatherland and a greater part of the wealth of
a common culture — language, law, customs, folklore and
history — are not and cannot be recognized as Hindus.
For though Hindus than to them is Fatherland as to
any other Hindu yet it is not to them a Holyland
loo. Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine.
Their mythology and Godmen, ideas and heroes are
not i:he children of this spil. Consequently their
names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin.
Their love is divided. Nay, if some of them be really
believing what they profess to do, then there can
be no choice— they must, to a man, set their Holy-
land above their Fatherland in their love and allegi-
ance. That is but natural. We are not condemning nor
are we lamenting. We are simply telling facts as they
stand. We have tried to determine the essentials of
Hindutva and in doing so we have discovered that the
Bolu-as and such other Mohammedan or Christian
communities possess all the essential qualifications of
Hindutva but one and that is that they do not look
upon India as their Holyland.

It is not a question of embracing any doctrine
propounding any new theory of the interpretation of

114 HIND.UTVA

God, Soul and Man, for we honestly believe that the
Hindu Thought — we are not speaking of any religion
which is dogma — has exhausted the very possibilities
of human speculation as to the nature of the Unkno-
wn—if not the Unknowable, or the nature of the relat-
ion between that and thou. Are you a monist — a mono-
theist — a pantheist — an atheist— an agnostic ? Here is
ample room, O soul ! whatever thou art, to love and
grow to thy fullest height and satisfaction in this
Temple of temples, that stands on no personal founda-
tion but on the broad and deep and strong foundation
of Truth. Why goest then to fill thy little pitcher to
wells far off, when thou standest on the banks of
the crystal-streamed Ganges herself ? Does not the
blood in your veins, O brother, of our common
forefathers cry aloud with the recollections of the. dear
old scenes and ties from which they were so cruelly
snatched away at the point of the sword? Then come ye
back to the fold of your brothers and sisters who with
arms extended are standing at the open gate to welcome
you — their long lost kith and kin. Where can you
find more freedom of worship than in this land where a
Charvak could preach atheism from the steps of the
temple of Mahakal — more freedom of social organis-
ation than in the Hindu society where from the Patnas
of Orissa to the Pandits of Benares, from the Santalas
to the Sadhus, each can develop a distinct social type
of polity or organize a new one ? Verily whatever, could
be found in the world is found here too. And if any-
thing is not found here it could be found nowhere. 79

79 tf^rfar ^ ^ ^TfeT * *pf^ i

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 115

Ye, who by race, by blood, by culture, by nationality
possess almost all the essentials of Hindutva and had
been forcibly snatched out of our ancestral home by the
hand of violence — ye, have only to render whole-
hearted love to our common Mother and recognize her
not only as Fatherland (Pitribhu) but even as 'a
Holyland (punyabhu); and ye would be most welcome
to the Hindu fold.

This is a choice which our countrymen and our old
kith and kin, the Bohras, Khojas, Memons and other
Mohammedan and Christian communities are free to
make — a choice again which must be a choice of love-
But as long as they are not minded thus, so long they
cannot be recognized as Hindus. We are, it must be
remembered, trying to analyse and determine the
essentials of Hindutva as that word is actually under-
stood to signify and would not be justified in straining it
in its application to suit any pre-conceived notions or
party convenience.

A Hindu, therefore, to sum up the conclusions
arrived at, is he who looks upon the land that extends
from Sindu to Sindu-from the Indus to the Seas,-
as the land of his forefathers — his Fatherland
( Pitribhu ), who inherits the blood of that race
whose first discernible source could be traced to the
Vedic Saptasindhus and which on its onward march,
assimilating much that was incorporated and ennobling
much that was assimilated, has come to be known as
the Hindu people, who has inherited and claims as his
own the culture of that race as expressed chiefly

116 HINDXJTVA

in their common classical language Sanskrit and
represented by a common history, a common lite-
rature, art and architecture, law and jurisprudence,
rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments, fairs and
festivals; and who above all, addresses this land, this
Sindhusthan as his Holyland ( Punyabhu ), as the
land of his prophets and seers, of his godmen and
gurus, the land of piety and pilgrimage. These are the
essentials of Hindutva — a common nation (Rashtra)
a common, race ( Jati ) and a common civilization
(Sanskriti). All these essentials could best be
summed up by stating in brief that he is a
Hindu to whom Sindhusthan is not only a Pitribhu
but also a Punyabhu. For the first two essentials of
Hindutva — nation and Jati — are clearly denoted and
connoted by the word Pitrubhu while the third
essential of Sanskriti is pre-eminently implied by the
word Punyabhu, as it is precisely Sanskriti including
sanskaras i. e. rites and rituals, ceremonies and
sacraments, that makes a land a Holyland. To make
the definition more handy, we may be allowed to
compress it in a couplet : —

A Sindu Sindhu paryanta, Yasya Bharatbhumika
Pitribhuh Punyabhushchaiva sa vai Hinduriti smritah

faro: yni^Nr tf 4" %ftfa *ier: n

Hindus in Sindh

The rough analysis to which the conception of
Hindutva was subjected in the foregoing pages has

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA H7

enabled us to frame a working definition embodying or
rather indicating the salient essentials of it. It now
remains to see how far this general definition can stand
a detailed examination that could be best conducted
by testing a few typical and some of the most different
cases which have in fact made the necessity of a
definition so badly felt. While developing it we have
tried at each step to free it, so far as it is possible to
do so in the case of so comprehensive and elusive a
generalization as that, from the defect of being
too wide. If we find in testing a few typical cases in the
light of this definition that they all fit in well then we
may be sure that it is free from the opposite defect of
being too narrow. We have seen that it is not open to
Ativyapti,80 it remains to be seen whether it is not open
to Avyapti8i also

The geographical divisions that obtain amongst
the Hindus would, at a glance, be seen to harmonize
well with the spirit of our definition. The fundamental
basis of it is the land from Sindhu to Sindhu, and
although many of our brethren, and especially those
who had been the most undoubted descendants of the
ancient Sindhus and who besides are the very people
that to this day have never changed the ancient name
either of their land or of their race, and are called to
day as five thousand years ago, Sindhi, the children of
Sindhudesha, inhabit the other bank of the Indus ; yet,
as in the mention of a river the mention of both its
banks is implied as a matter of course so that part of

80 arf^rffar 81 3*5*nfar

118 HINDUTVA

Sindh which constitutes the western bank of the Indus
is a natural part of Sindhusthan and is covered by our
definition. Secondly, accessories to the mainland are
always known by the name of the latter. And thirdly, our
Hindu people on that side of the Sindhu had throughout
history looked upon this land of Bharatvarsha as their
real Pitribhu as well as Punyabhu. They had never
been guilty of matricide in attempting to SQt up the
patch they inhabit as their only Pitribhu or only
Punyabhu. On the other hand their Banaras and
Kailas and Gangotri are our Banaras and Kailas and
Gangotri. From the Vedic time they are a part integral
of Bharatvarsha, Sindhushivisauveers are mentioned in
Ramayan and Mahabharat as the-rightful constituents of
the great Hindu confederacy and commonwealth. They
belong to our Rashtra, to our Jati and to our Sans-
krit!. Therefore they are Hindus and their case is well-
covered^by our definition.

But even if one rejects the contention- that the
ownership of a river does employ, unless otherwise
stated, the ownership of both its banks yet the defini-
tion remains as sound as ever and applies to our
Sindhi brethren on other grounds. For apart from the
special case of our Sindhi brethren that inhabit the
other side of the Indus, there are hundreds of thousa-
nds of Hindus who have settled in all parts of the world.
A time may come when these our Hindu colonists, who
even to-day are the dominating factor in trade,
numbers, capacity and intellect jn their respective
lands, may come to own a whole country and form a
separate state. But will this simple fact of residence in

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA H9

lands other than Hindusthan render one a non-Hin-
du ? Certainly not ; for the first essential of Hindutva is
not that a man must not reside in lands outside India,
but that wherever he or his descendants may happen to
be he must recognize Sindhusthan as the Land of his
forefathers. Nay more; it is not a question of recogni-
tion either. If his ancestors came from India as
Hindus he cannot help recognizing India as his Pitri-
bhu. So this definition of Hindutva is compatible with
any conceivable .expansion of our Hindu people. Let
our colonists continue unabated their labours of
founding a Greater India, a Mahabharat to the best of
their capacities and contribute all that is best in our
civilization to the upbuilding of humanity. Let them
enrich the people that inhabit the earth from Pole to
Pole with their virtues and let them in return enrich
their own country and race by imbibing all that is
healthy and true wherever found. Hindutva does not
clip the wings of the Himalayan eagles but only adds
to their urge. So long as ye, O Hindus ! look upon
Hindusthan as the land of your forefathers and as the
land of your prophets, and cherish the priceless heri-
tage of their culture and their blood, so long nothing
can stand in the way of your desire to expand. The
only geographical limits of Hindutva are the limits of
our earth !

So far as the racial aspect of our definition is con-
cerned we cannot think of any exception that can seri-
ously challenge its validity. Just as ia England we find
Iberians, Kelts, Angles, Saxons, Danes, Normans now
fused, in spite of the racial restrictions on intermarriages*

120 HINDUTVA

into one nation, so the ancient racial distinctions of
Aryans, Kolarians, Dravidians and others even if they
had ever been keen, can no longer be recognized. We
have dealt with the point as exhaustively as necessary in
the foregoing pages and pointed out that the Anulom
and Pratilom systems recognized in our law-books bear
indisputable testimony to the fact that a fusion sufficient
to keep the flow of common blood through our body
politic vigorous and fresh was even then an accomplish-
ed fact. Nature again broke the barriers where custom
refused to pull them down in time. Bheemsen was
neither the first nor the last of Aryans to make lovs
to a Hidimba, nor the Brahmin lady the mother of
Vyadhakarma, to whom we have referred already, wae
the only Aryan girl that took a fancy to a Vyadha
youth. Out of a dozen Bhils or Kolis or even Santals, a
youth or a girl may at times be picked up and dropped
in a city school without any fear of being recognized as
such either by a physical or by a moral test. The race
that is born of the fusion, which on the whole is a hea-
lthy one, because gradual, of the Aryans, Kolarians,
Dravidians and all those of our ancestors, whose blood
we as a race inherit, is rightly called neither an Aryan,
nor Kolarian, nor Dra vidian— but the Hindu race; that
is, that People who live as children of a common
motherland, adoring a common holyland—the land that
lies between the Sindhus. Therefore the Santals, Kolis,
Bhils Panchamas, Namashudras and all other such
tribes and classes are Hindus. This Sindhusthan is as
emphatically, if not more emphatically, the land of their
forefathers as of those of the so-called Aryans ; they

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 121

inherit the Hindu blood and the Hindu culture ; and
even those of them who have not as yet come fully un-
der the iflnuence of any orthodox Hindu sect, do still
worship deities and saints and follow a religion how-
ever primitive, are still purely attached to this land,
which therefore to them is not only a Fatherland but a
HolyLand.

There would have been no serious objection raised
against the cultural aspect of Hindutva too, but for the
unfortunate misunderstanding that owes its origin to the
confusing similarity between the two terms Hindutva
and Hinduism. We have tried already to draw a clear line
of demarcation between the two conceptions and prote-
sted against the wrong use of the word Hinduism to
denote the Sanatan Dharma alone. Hindutva is not
indentical with Hindu Dharma; nor is Hindu Dharma
indentical with Hinduism. This twofold mistake that
indentifies Hindutva with Hindu Dharma and both with
Sanatani sect is justly resented by our non-Sanatani
sects or religious systems and goads a small section of
people amongst them — not to explode this mistaken
notion, but unfortunately to commit another grave and
suicidal mistake in the opposite direction and disown
their Hindutva itself. We hope that our definition will
leave no ground for any such bitterness of feelings on
either side and based on truth as it is, would be acknow-
ledged by all the fair-minded people throughout our
Hindu society. But as in the general treatment of this
question we could not take any notice of any special case
we shall do so now. Let us first take the case of our
Sikh brotherhood. No one could be so silly as to

122 HINDUTVA

contest the statement that Sindusthan, Asindhu Sindhu
Paryanta yasya Bharatbhumika', 82 is their Fatherland-
the land that ever since the first extant records of the
Vedic Period has been the land where their forefathers
lived and loved and worshipped and prayed. Secondly,
they most undoubtedly inherit the Hindu blood in their
veins as much as any one in Madras or Bengal does
Nay more, while we Hindus in Maharashtra or Bengal
inherit the blood of the Aryans as well as of those
other ancient people who inhabited this land, the Sikhs
are the almost direct descendants of those ancient
Sindhus and can claim to have drunk their being at the
very fountain of this Ganges of our Hindu life before
she had descended down to the plains, Thirdly, they
have contributed and to therefore are the rightful co-
partners in our Hindu culture, For Saraswati was a river
in the Punjab before she became the Deified Image of
Learning and Art. To this day, do millions of Hindus
throughtout Hindusthan join in the enchanted chorus
with which the Sindhus, your forefathers, oh Sikhs, paid
the tribute of a grateful people to, and extolled the
glories of the River on whose banks the first seeds of our
culture and civilization were sown and catching their
Rigvedic accents sing 'Ambitame, Naditame, Devitame
Saraswati; 83 the Vedas are theirs as they are ours, if not
as a revelation yet as revered work that sings of the first
giant struggles of man to tap the sources of nature. The
first giant struggle of Light agsinst the forces of dark-

83 sTfocr^r, %wtm, ?r^g% srrefcr 1

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 123

ness and ignorance, that had stolen and kept impriso-
ned the spirited waters and refused to allow the rays of
Illumination touch man and rouse the soul in him.
The story of the Sikhs, like any one of us must begin
with the Vedas, pass on through the palaces of Ayodhya,
witness the battlefield of Lanka, help Lahu to lay the
foundation of Lahore and watch prince Sidhartha leave
the confines of Kapilavastu and enter the caves to find
some way out to lighten the sorrows of man. The Sikhs
along with us bewail the fall of Prithviraj, share the
fate of a conquered people and suffer together as
Hindus. Millions of Sikh udasis, Nirmalas, the Gahan-
gambhirs and the Sindhi. Sikhs adore the Sanskrit
language not only as the language of their ancestors
but as the sacred language of their land. While the rest
cannot but own it as the tongue of their forefathers
and as the Mother of Gurumukhi and Punjabi, which
yet in its infancy is still sucking the milk of life at its
breast. Lastly the land Asindhu Sindhuparyanta is not
only the Pitribhu also the Punyabhu to the Sikhs. The
land spread from the river, Sindhu, to the seas is not
only the fatherland but also the holyland to the Sikhs.
Guru Nanak and Guru Govind, Shri Banda and Ram-
sing were born and bred in Hindusthan; the lakes of
Hindusthan are the lakes of nectar ( Amritsar ) and of
freedom — (Muktasar); the land of Hindusthan is the
land of prophets and prayer— Gurudvar and Gurughar.
Really if any community in India is Hindu beyond
cavil or criticism it is our Sikh brotherhood in the
Punjab, being almost the autochthonous dwellers of
the Saptsindhu land and the direct descendants of the

124 HINDUTVA

Sindhu or Hindu people. The Sikh of to day is the
Hindu of yesterday and the Hindu of to-day may be
the Sikh of tomorrow. The change of a dress, or a
custom, or a detail of daily life cannot change the
blood or the seed, nor can efface and blot out history
itself.

To the millions of our Sikh brethren their
Hindutva is self-evident. The Sahajdhari,udasi, Nirmal,
Gahangambhir and the Sindhi Sikhs are proud of
being Hindus by race and by nationality. As their
Gurus themselves had been the children of Hindus they
would fail to understand if not resent any such attempt-
to class them as Non-Hindus. The Gurugrantha is read
by the Sanatanis as well as by the Sikhs as a sacred
work ; both of them have fairs and festivals in common.
The Sikhs of the Tatkhalsa sect also so far as the bulk
of their population is concerned, are equally attached to
their racial appellation and live amongst Hindus as
Hindus. It cannot be but shocking to them to be told
that they had suddenly ceased to be Hindus. Our
racial Unity is so unchallenged and complete that
inter-marriages are quite common amongst the Sikhs
and Sanatanis.

The fact is that the protest that is at times raised
by some leaders of our Sikh brotherhood against their
being classed as Hindus would never have been
heard if the term Hinduism was not allowed to get
identical with Sanatanism. This confusion of ideas and
the vagueness of expression resulting therefrom, are at
the root of this fatal tendency that mars at times the

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 125

cordial realtions existing between our sister Hindu
communities. We have tried to make it clear that
Hindutva is not to be determined by any theological
tests. Yet we must repeat it once more that the Sikhs are
free to reject any or all things they dislike as supersti-
tions in Sanatandharma, even the binding authority of
the Vedas as a revelation. They thereby may cease to be
Sanatanis, but cannot cease to be Hindus. Sikhs are
Hindus in the sense of our definition of Hindutva and
not in any religious sense whatever- Religiously they
are Sikhs as Jains are Jains, Lingayats are Lingayats,
Vaishnavas are Vaishnavas ; but all of us racially and
nationally and culturally are a polity and a people, one
and indivisible, most fitly and from times immemorial
called Hindus. No other word can express our racial
oneness— not even Bharatiya can do that for reasons
dealt with in the forgoing pages. Bharatiya indicates
an Indian and expresses a larger generalization but
cannot express racial unity of us Hindus. We are
Sikhs, and Hindus and Bharatiyas. We are all three put
together and none exclusively.

Another reason besides this fear of being indenti-
fied with the followers of Sanatanpanth which added to
the zeal of some of our Sikh brothers and made them
insist on getting classed separately as non-Hindus, was
a political one. This is not the place of entering into
merits or demerits of special representation. The
Sikhs were naturally anxious to guard the special
interests of their community and if the Mohammedans
could enjoy the privilege of a special and communal
representation, we do not understand why any other

126 HINDUTVA

important minority in India should not claim similar
concession. But we feel that, that claim should
not have been backed up by our Sikh brothers by
an untenable and suicidal plea of being non-
Hindus. Sikhs, to guard their own interests
could have pressed for and succeeded in securing
special and communal representation on the ground of
being an important minority as our non-Brahmins and
other communities have done without renouncing
their birthright of Hindutva. Our Sikh brotherhood is
certainly not a less important community than the
Mohammedans — in fact to us Hindus they are more
important than any non-Hindu community in India.
The harm that a special and communal representation
does is never so great as the harm done by the attitude
of racial aloofness. Let the Sikhs, the Jains, the Lingay-
ats, the non-Brahmins and even, for the matter of
that, Brahmins press and fight for the right of special
and communal representation, if they honestly look
upon it as indispensable for their communal growth.
For their growth is the growth of the whole Hindu-
society. Even in ancient times our four main castes
enjoyed a kind of special representation on communal
basis in our councils of State as well as in local bodies.
They could do that without refusing to get fused into
the larger whole and incorporated into the wider
generalization of Hindutva, Let the Sikhs be classed as
Sikhs religiously, but as Hindus racially and culturally.

The brave people placed their heads by hundreds
under the executioner's axe rather than. disown' their

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 127

Guru. 84 Will they disown their seed, forswear their
fathers and sell their birthright for a mess of pottage ?
God forbid ! Let our minorities remember that if stre-
ngth lies in union, then in Hindutva lies the firmest and
yet the dearest bond that can effect a real, lasting and
powerful union of our people. You may fancy that it
pays you to, remain aloof for the passing hour, but it
would do incalculable harm to this our ancient race and'
civilization as a whole — and especially to yourselves.
Your interests are indissolubly bound with the interests
of your other Hindu brethren. Whenever in the future
as in the past a foreigner raises a sword against the
Hindu civilization it is sure to strike you as deadly as
any other Hindu community. Whenever in future
as in the past the Hindus as a people come to their
own and under a Shivaji or a Ranjit, a Ramchandra
or a Dharma, an Ashoka or an Amoghwarsha
feeling the quickening touch of life and activity mount
the pinnacles of glory and greatness — that day would
shed its lustre on you as well as on any other members of
our Hindu commonwealth. So, brothers, be not
lured by the immediate gains, partly or otherwise,
nor be duped by misreadings and misinterpretations of
history. I was once told by one who posing as a
Granthi was nevertheless convicted for committing a
dacoily in the house of a Brahmin to whom he owed
money and whom he consequently murdered, that the
Sikhs were not Hindus and that they could incur no
guilt by killing a Brahmin as the sons of Govindsing

84 snr|<r 5tf*t f^r=r fozrr i %t forr fsrcs ^ fen !

128 HINDUTVA

were betrayed by a Brahmin cook. Fortunately there
was another Sikh gentleman and a real Granthi and was
recognized as such by all learned Sikhs who immediate-
ly contradicted and cornered him by several examples
of Matidas and others, who had sheltered the Guru and
proved true to the Sikhs even unto martyrdom. Was
not Shivaji betrayed by his kith and kin and his grand-
son again by a Pisal who too was a Hindu ? But did
Shivaji or his nation disown their race and cease to be
Hindus ? Many of Lhe Sikhs have acted treacherously
first at the time of desertion of the heroic Banda, then
again at the time of the last war of the Khalsa forces
with the English. Guru Govindsing himself was deserted
by a number of Sikhs in the very thick of the fight and
it was this act of treacherous cowardice of these Sikhs
which by forcing our lion-hearted Guru to try a desperate
sortie gave occasion to that cursed Brahmin wretch
to betray his two sons, If, therefore, for the crime of
the latter we cease to be Hindus, then for the crime
of the former we ought to cease to be Sikhs too !

This minority of the Hindus as well as the major
communities of them did not fall from the skies as
separate creations. They are an organic growth that
has its roots embedded deep in a common land and in
a common culture. You cannot pick up a lamb and by
tying a Kachchha and KripanS5 on it, make a lion of
it ! If the Guru succeeded in forming a band of martyrs
and warriors he could do so because the race that
produced him as well as that band was capable of

85 *P^ ^TFT

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 129

being moulded thus. The lion's seed alone can breed
lions, The flower cannot say 'I bloom and smell:
surely I came out of the stalk alone — I have nothing
to do with the roots ! ' No more can we deny our
seed or our blood. As soon as you point at a Sikh who
was true to his Guru you have automatically pointed
at a Hindu who was true to the Guru for before being
a Sikh he was, and yet continues to be a Hindu. So
long as our Sikh brethren are true to Sikhism they
must of necessity continue to be Hindus for so long
must this land, this Bharatbhumika from Sindhu to the
seas, remain their Fatherland and their Holyland. It is
by ceasing to be Sikhs alone that they may, perhaps,
cease to be Hindus.

We have dealt at some length with this special
case of our Sikh brotherhood as all those arguments
and remarks would automatically test all similar cases
of our other non-Vaidik sects and religions in the light of
our definition. The Devsamajis for example are agno-
stics but Hindutva has little to do with agnosticism, or
for the matter of that, atheism. The Devsamajis look on
this land as the land of their forefathers, their father-
land as well as their Holyland and are therefore Hindus.
Of course, it is superfluous, after all this to refer to
our Aryasamaj. All the essentials of Hindutva hold
good in their case so eminently that they are Hindus.
We, in fact, are unable to hit upon any case that can lay
our definition open to the charge of exclusiveness.

Tn one case alone it seems to offer some real diffi-
culty. Is, for example, Sister Nivedita a Hindu ? If ever

130 HINDUTVA

an exception proves the rule it does so here. Our patri-
otic and noble-minded sister had adopted our land from
Sindu to the seas as her Fatherland. She truly loved it
as such, and had our nation been free, we would have
been the first to bestow the right of citizenship on such
loving souls. So the first essential may, to some extent,
be said to hold good in her case. The second essential
of common blood of Hindu parentage must, neverthe-
less and necessarily, be absent in such cases as these.
The sacrament of marriage with a Hindu which really
fuses and is universally admitted to do so, two beings
into one may be said to remove this disqualification.
But although this second essential failed, either way to
hold good in her case, the third important qualification
of Hindutva did entitle her to be recognized as a Hindu.
For she had adopted our culture and come to adore
our land as her Holyland. She felt, she was a Hindu and
that is, apart from all technicalities, the real and the most
important test. But we must not forget that we have to
determine the essentials of Hindutva in the sense in
which the word is actually used by an overwhelming
majority of people. And therefore we must say that any
convert of non-Hindu parentage to Hindutva can be a
Hindu, if bona fide, he or she adopts our land as his or her
country and marries a Hindu, thus coming to love our
land as a real Fatherland, and adopts our culture and
thus adores our land as the Punyabhu. The children
of such a union as that would, other things being equal,
be most emphatically Hindus. We are not authorized
to go further.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 131

But by coming to believe into the tenets of any
sects of the Hindus a foreign convert may be recognized
as a Sanatani, or a Sikh, or a Jain; and as these reli-
gions being founded by or revealed to Hindus, go by
the name of Hindudharma the convert too, may be
religiously called a Hindu. But it must be understood
that a religious or cultural convert possesses only one
of the three essentials of Hindutva and it is owing to
this disqualification that people generally do not recog-
nise as a Hindu any one and every one who subscribes
to the religious beliefs of our race. So deep our feeling
of gratitude is towards a Sister Nivedita or an Annie
Besant for the services they rendered to the cause
of our Motherland and our culture, so soft-hearted
and sensitive to the touch of love as a race we
Hindus are, that Sister Nivedita or a person like her
who so completely identifies his or her being with the
Being of our people, is almost unconsciously received
in the Hindu fold. But it should be done as an excep-
tion to the rule. The rule itself must neither be too
rigid nor too elastic The several tests to which we have
subjected our definition of Hindutva have, we believe,
proved tftat it satisfies both these requirements and
involves neither Avyapti nor Ativyapti; neither
contraction nor expansion of the exact connotation.
Unique Natural Blessings to Hindusthan

So far we have not allowed any considerations of
utility to prejudice our inquiry. But having come to its
end it will not be out of place to see how far the attri-
butes, which we found to be the essentials of Hindutva,
contribute towards the strength, cohesion, and progress

132 HINDUTVA

of our people. Do these essentials constitute a founda-
tion so broad, so deep, so strong that basing upon it
the Hindu people can build a future which can face
and repel the attacks of all the adverse winds that blow;
or does the Hindu race stand on feet of clay ?

Some of the ancient nations raised huge walls so
as to convert a whole country into a fortified castle.
To-day their walls are trodden to dust or are but scarcely
discernible by a few scattered mounds here and there;
while the people they were meant to protect are not
discernible at all. Our ancient neighbours, the Chinese,
laboured from generation to generation and raised a
rampart, embracing the limits of an empire, so wide,
so high, so strong, a wonder of the human world. That
too, as all human wonders must, sank under its own
weight. But behold the ramparts of Nature! Have they
not, these Himalayas, been standing there as one whose
desires are satisfied — so they seemed to the Vedic bard
— so they seem to us to-day. These are our ramparts
that have converted this vast continent into a cosy
castle.

You take up buckets and fill your trenches with
water and call it a moat. Behold, Varuna himself, with
his one hand pushing continents aside, fills the gap by
pouring seas on seas with the other! This Indian (^cean
with its bays and gulfs, is our moat.

These are our frontier lines bringing within our
reach the advantages of an island as well as an insular
country.

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 133

She is the richly endowed, daughter of God — this
our Motherland. Her rivers are deep and perennial.
Her land is yielding to plough and her fields loaded
with golden harvests. Her necessaries of life are few and
a genial nature yields them all almost for the asking.
Rich in her fauna, rich in her flora, she knows she owes
it all to the immediate source of light and heat— the
sun. She covets not the icy lands ; blessed be they and
their frozen latitudes. If heat is at times ' enervating '
here, cold is at times benumbing there. If cold induces
manual labour, heat removes much of its very necessity.
She takes more delight in quenched thirst than in the
parched throat. Those who have not, let them delight
in exerting to have. But those who have — may be
allowed to derive pleasure from the very fact of having.
Father Thames is free to work at feverish speed,
wrapped in his icy sheets. She loves to visit her ghats
and watch her boats gliding down the Ganges on her
moonlit waters. With the plough, the peacocks, and
lotus, the elephant and the Gita, she is willing to
forego, if that must be, whatever advantage the colder
latitudes enjoy. She knows she cannot have all her own
way. Her ^gardens are green and shady, her granaries
well-stocked, her waters crystal, her flowers scented,
her fruits juicy and her herbs healing. Her brush is
dipped in the colours of Dawn and her flute resonant
with the music of Gokul. Verily Hind is the richly
endowed daugher of God.

Neither ths Eaglish nor the French with the
exception of the Chinese and perhaps the Americans, no
people are gifted with a l?nd that can equal in natural

134 HINDUTVA

strength and richness the land of Sindusthan . A country,
a common home is the first important essential of
a stable strong nationality^ and as of all countries in the
world our country can hardly be surpassed by any in
its capacity to afford a soil so specially fitted for the
growth of a great nation ; we Hindus whose very first
article of faith is the love we bear to the common
Fatherland, have.in that love the strongest talismanic tie
that can bind close and keep a nation firm and enthuse
and enable it to accomplish things greater than ever.

The second essential of Hindutva puts the estimate
of our latent powers of national cohesion and greatness
yet higher. No country in the world with the exception
of China again, is peopled by a race so homogeneous,
yet so ancient and yet so strong both numerically and
vitally. The Americans too, whom we found equally
fortunate with us so far as excellent geographical basis
of nationality is concerned, are decidedly left behind.
Mohammedans are no race nor are the Christians. They
are a religious unit, yet neither a racial nor a national
one. But we Hindus, if possible, are all the three put
together, and live under our ancient and common roof-
The numerical strength of our race is an asset that
cannot be too highly prized.

And culture ? The English and the Americans feel
they are kith and kin because they possess a Shake-
speare in common. But not only Kalidas or a Bhasa
but, Oh Hindus ! ye possess a Ramayan and Maha-
bharat in common — and the Vedas ! One of the
national songs the American children are taught to sing

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 135

attempts to rouse tbeir sense of eternal self-importance
by pointing out to the hundred years twice told that
stand behind their history. The Hindu counts his years
not by centuries but by cycles— the Yuga and the Kalpa
and amazed asks

Vfti' ^ ^TcTT TT^CTjft t !

The Uttra Kosala of Raghupathi is nowhere to be
seen, nor is Shri Krishna's city of Mathura .
He does not attempt to rouse the sense of self-impor-
tance so much as the sense of proportion which is
Truth. And that has perhaps made him last longer
than Ramses and Nebuchadnezzar. If a people that
had no past has no future, then a people that had
produced an unending galaxy of heroes and hero-
worshippers and who are conscious of having fought
with and vaquished the forces whose might struck
Greece and Rome, the Pharaohs and the Incas, dead,
have in their history a guarantee of their future
greatness more assuring than any other people on
earth yet possess.

But besides culture the tie of common holyland
has at times proved stronger than the chains of a
Motherland. Look at the Mohammedans. Mecca to
them is a sterner reality than Delhi or Agra. Some of
them do not make any secret of being bound to sacri-
fice all India if that be to the glory of Islam or could
save the city of their prophet. Look at the Jews ; nei-
ther centuries of prosperity nor sense of gratitude for

136 HINDUTVA

the shelter they found, can make them more attached
or even equally attached to the several countries they
inhabit. Their love is, and must necessarily be divided
between the land of their birth and the land of their
Prophets. If the Zionists' dreams are ever realized — if
Palestine becomes a Jewish State and it will gladden us
almost as much as our Jewish friends — they, like the
Mohammedans would naturally set the interests of their
Holyland above those of their Motherland in Ame-
rica and Europe arid in base of war between their
adopted country and the Jewish State, would naturally
sympathise with the latter, if indeed they do not bodily
go over to it, History is too full of examples of such
desertions to cite particulars. The crusades again,
attest to the wonderful influence that a common holy-
land exercises over peoples widely separated in race,
nationality and language, to bind and hold them
together.

The ideal conditions, therefore, under which a
nation can attain perfect solidarity and cohesion
would, other things being equal, be found in the. case
of those people who inhabit the land they adore, the
land of whose forefathers is also the land of their Gods
and Angels, of Seers and Prophets ; the scenes of
whose history are also the scenes of their mythology.

The Hindus are about the only people who ate
blessed with these ideal conditions that are at the same
time incentive to national solidarity, cohesion and
greatness. Not even the Chinese are blessed thus.
Only Arabia and Palestine, if ever the Jews can succeed

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 137

in founding their state there, can be said to possess
this unique advantage. But Arabia is incomparably
poorer in the natural, cultural, historical, and nume-
rical essentials of a great people ; and even if the
dreams of the Zionists are ever realized into a
Palestine State still they too must be equally lacking in
these.

England, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey proper,
Persia, Japan, Afganistan, Egypt of to-day ( for the old
descendants of 'Punto* and their Egypt is dead long
since ), and other African states, Mexico, Peru, Chile
(not to mention states and nations lesser than all
these ), though racially more of less hemogeneous are
yet less advantageously situated than we are in geogra-
phical, cultural, historical and numerical essentials,
besides lacking the unique gift of a sanctified Mother-
land. Of the remaining nations, Russia in Europe, and
United states in America, though geographically equally
well-gifted with us, are yet poorer, in almost every
other requisite of nationality. China alone of the
present comity of nations is almost a« richty gifted
with the geographical, racial, cultural essentials as
the Hindus are. Only in the possession of a common,
a sacred and a perfect language, the Sanskrit, and a
sanctified Motherland, we are so far as the essen-
tials that contribute to national solidarity are
concerned more fortunate.

Thus the actual essentials of Hindutva are, as
this running sketch reveals, also the ideal essentials
of nationality. If we would, we could build on this

138 HINDUTVA

foundation of Hindutva a future greater than what
any other people on earth can dream of, greater
even than our own past ; provided we are able to
utilize our opportunities. For let our people remem-
ber that great combinations are the order of the
day. The league of Nations, the alliances of powers
Pan-Islamism, Pan-Slavism, Pan-Ethiopism, all little
beings are seeking to get themselves incorporated into
greater wholes, so as to be better-fitted for the
struggle for existence and power. Those who are not
naturally and historically blessed with numerical or
geographical or racial advantages are seeking to
share them with others. Woe to those who have them
already as their birth-right and know them not; or
worse, despise them ! The nations of the world are
desperately trying to find a place in this or that
combination for aggression— can any one of you, Oh
Hindus! whether Jain or Samaji or Sanatani or
Sikh or any other subsection afford to cut your-
selves off or fall out and destroy the ancient, the
natural and the organic combination that already
exists? — a combination that is bound not by any scraps
of paper nor by the ties of exigencies alone, but by
the ties of blood, birth and culture? Strengthen
them if you can : pull down the barriers that have
survived their utility, of castes and customs, of sects
and sections: What of interdining?— but intermarriages
between provinces and provinces, castes and castes,
be encouraged where they do not exist. But where
they already exist as between the Sikhs and Sana-
tanies, Jains and Vaishnayas, Lingayats and Non-

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 139

Lingayats — suicidal be the hand that tries to cut the
nuptial tie. Let the minorities remember they would
be cutting the very branch on which they stand.
Strengthen every tie that binds you to the main
organism, whether of blood or language or common
Motherland. Let this ancient and noble stream of
Hindu blood flow from vein to vein, from Attock to
Cuttack till at last the Hindu people get fused and
welded into an indivisible whole, till our race gets
consolidated and strong sharp as steel.

Just cast a glance at the past, then at the present:
Pan-Islamism jn Asia, the political Leagues in Europe,
the Pan-Ethiopic movement in Africa and America —
and then see, O Hindus, if your future is not entirely
bound up with the future of India and the future of
India is bound up in the last resort, with Hindu strength.
We are trying our best, as we ought to do, to develop
the consciousness of and a sense of attachment to the
greater whole, whereby Hindus, Mohammedans, Parsis
Christians and Jews would feel as Indians first and
every other thing afterwards. But whatever progress
India may have made to that goal one thing remains
almost axiomatically true— not only in India but every-
where in the world — that a nation requires a foundation
to stand upon and the essence of the life of a nation is
the life of that portion of its citizens whose interests
and history and aspirations are most closely bound up
with the land and who thus provide the real foundation
to the structure of their national state. Tnke the case of
Turkey. The young Turks after the revolution had to
open their Parliament and military institutions to Arme-

140 HINDUTVA

mans and Christians on a non-religious and secular basis.
But when the war with Servia came the Christians and
Armenians first wavered and then many a regiment
consisting of them went bodily over to the Servians,
who politically and racially and religiously were more
closely bound up with them. Take the case of America;
when the German war broke out she suddenly had to
fac£ the danger of desertions of her German citizens;
while the Negro citizens there sympathise more with their
brethren in Africa than with their white countrymen.
American State, in the last resort, must stand or fall
with the fortunes of its Anglo-Saxon constituents. So
with the Hindus, they being the people, whose past,
present and future are most closely bound with the soil
of Hindusthan as Pitribhu, asPunyabhu, they constitute
the foundation, the bedrock, the reserved forces of the
Indian state. Therefore even from the point of Indian
nationality, must ye, O Hindus, consolidate and stre-
ngthen Hindu nationality; not to give wanton offence
to any of our non-Hindu compatriots, in fact to any
one in the world but in just and urgent defence of
our race and land; to render it impossible for others to
betray her or to subject her to unprovoked attack by
any of those 'Pan-isms' that are struggling forth from
continent to continent. As long as other communities in
India or in the world are not respectively planning India
first or mankind first, but all are busy in organizing
offensive and defensive alliances and combinations on
enrirely narrow racial or religious or national basis, so
long, at least, so long O Hindus, strengthen if you can
those subtle bonds that like nerve threads bind you in

ESSENTIALS OF HINDUTVA 141

one organic social being. Those of you who in a
lit suicidal try to cut off the most vital of those ties
and dare to disown the name Hindu will find to their
cost that in doing so they have cut themselves off from
the very source of our racial life and strength.

The presence of only a few of these essentials of
nationality which we have found to constitute Hindutva
enabled little nations like Spain or Portugal to get
themselves lionized in the world. But when all of those
ideal conditions obtain here what is there in the human
world that the Hindus cannot accomplish?

Thirty crores of people, with India for their basis
of operation, for their Fatherland and for their Holy-
land with such a history behind them, bound together
by ties of a common blood and common culture can
dictate their terms to the whole world. A day will come
vihen mankind will have to face the force.

Equally certain it is that whenever the Hindu*
come to hold such a position whence they could dictate
terms to the whole world — those terms cannot be very
different from the terms which Gita dictates' or the
Buddha lajs down- A Hindu is most intensely so,
when he ceases to be Hindu; and with a Shankar
claims the whole earth for a Benares 'Waranasi
Medini ! ' or with a Tukaram exclaims

'my countiy ! Oh brothers, 'the limits of the Universe
— there the frontiers of my country lie V

OTHER BOOKS WRITTEN BY

Swatantrya Veer V. D. Savarkar
(1) War of Indian Independence 1857

This book was Written in 1908, It was proscribed by
the British Government before its publication; Lala
Hardayal, Martyr Bhagat Singh & Netaji Subhash
Chandra Bose Published its underground editions. It is
honoured as Bhagawad Geeta by Armed Revolution-
aries. Ban on it was lifted in 1946. Now it is translat-
ed in Hindi, Tamil, Malyali, Gujarathi.

Complete English Edition (in Press) Rs. 25

Abriged - „ Rs. 2

Hindutwa, Hindu Rashtra Darshan,
Hindu Pad Padshahi (In one Book)- Rs. 16

4 Historic Statements Rs. 25

Six Golden Chapters of Hindu
History ( in Press ) Rs.25

Veer Savarkar -Biography : ByD. Keer Rs. 30

For Veer Savarkar" s Literature and about Copy right
Write to:

Shri Balarao Savarkar, Veer Savarkar Prakashan,
Savarkar Sadan, 71 Shivajee Park, Bombay 28